OGTAN seeks standardisation of training modules in oil industry

The Oil and Gas Trainers’ Association of Nigeria (OGTAN) has decried lack of standard in the training of manpower in the oil and gas sector.The President of the Association, Dr Mayowa Afe, said the all-comers affair of training in the sector has made regulation of standard a difficult task.

Speaking when he paid an official visit to the Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), Dr Bello Gusau, in Abuja, Afe urged the PTDF and Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) not to recognize training institutions that are not certified by OGTAN.

His words: “We are now enlightening our stakeholders such the PTDF and NCDMB not to patronize people that are not certified by OGTAN. We are meeting with the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources in a bid strategize towards having the one of the best institutionalized training body that can compete with any training bodies in any part of the world.”

He explained that OGTAN is the training platform for all trainers in the oil and gas sector in Nigeria with main focus on standardization of training modules in every aspect of oil and gas training.

Apart from training manpower for the oil and gas sector, Afe stressed that OGTAN also link Nigerians up with other training organizations across the globe in a bid to attaining international standards in trainings.

The OGTAN boss hinted that the gap between what is needed by the industry and what is produced by the universities is indeed real.“There is a gap between the university and industry. The industry requires a minimum standard for graduates and if the university ’ graduates do not meet that minimum requirement, they cannot be engaged in the industry. Indeed, there are jobs in the oil and gas industry but there are no competent Nigerians because there is an existing gap and the gap is what OGTAN is out to bridge by providing quality trainings to university lecturers who are scarcely trained in the art of emerging technologies. The irony is that these ill-equipped lecturers are the same people teaching graduates that come into the industry. How can they measure up? We want to synergize with all our partners to ensure we give adequate support to all our universities so that they can provide the best of trainings to the students to be fit-for-purpose graduates,” he said.

He cautioned that expecting the International Oil Companies (IOCs) to get involved in training of manpower for the Nigerian oil and gas sector would be expecting too much, saying, “we must realize that IOCs are here for business and not to train Nigerians. They are forced to go outside to bring experts when they cannot get Nigerian experts and this singular step denies so many Nigerians jobs. This is because just one single foreign expatriate can take the jobs of 20 local experts. This leads to capital flight and we are determined to stop it by increasing the capacity of Nigerians to take up jobs that foreign experts are doing by giving them quality training.”

While he lauded the impacts of the PTDF, NCDMB and Industrial Training Fund (ITF), Afe stressed that the body is determined to institutionalize their interventions to achieve sustainability.

He added: “There should be institutional framework that will sustain the development of the universities and training institutions so that they can produce the best quality available. Our aim is to ensure that not only Nigerians who study abroad can give quality service, but also to provide a platform for every Nigerians irrespective of where they study.”OGTAN was established by the Nigerian Content Act, which came into operation in 2010.
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