By Chinwendu Obienyi

In line with the Federal Government’s order on the ease of doing business and to ensure effective implementation of Nigerian content in the Oil and Gas industry, the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) has enhanced the model of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Joint Qualification System (NOGIC-JQS).

The NOGIC-JQS, powered by the NCDMB, is an electronic platform of data collation, dissemination and retrieval system for capacity building for oil and gas professionals and others interested in the industry.

Speaking on the theme, “Optimising the JQS- Functionalities for the Ease of Doing Business”, with the board during a workshop organised by Nigerian Content Board, Executive Secretary, NCDMB, Simbi Wabote, explained that the NOGIC-JQS platform was upgraded to ensure operations between the board and stakeholders are repositioned.

“First thing we did was to enhance our ITE infrastructure and based on that, we moved the infrastructure from where it was to currently the infrastructure you are seeing today and since we did that, we have seen processes that are faster, processes that don’t clog the system and we began to implement the provisions of Section 55 and 56 of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development Act.

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“Based on  Section 55 and 56 of the Act, the NOGIC-JQS is an electronic platform designed to reposition operations with stakeholders, further meet objectives of the executive order by the Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, on the ease of doing business and the support of local content in public procurement,” he explained.

He further said, “this is just a first in the series of trying to let people have an understanding of what the JQS is supposed to accomplish and expect stakeholders to give us a feedback that will enable us to improve on the platform and to make them understand that within a stipulated time frame, we will deploy this IT tool to manage our activities with the board.”

According to him, “this platform will be of benefit to stakeholders as it will reduce travel and turnaround time, foster better institutional collaboration, enhance internal efficiency, resource for engaging skilled workforce to stop the paper trail and enable people to do business with NCDMB.”

Wabote thereafter said the board will ensure that the platform will have a strategic blueprint to effectively monitor local content implementation in the country, enhance skills gap and create a business enabling environment in the next 10 years.

“This platform will hope to increase in-country value in terms of Nigerian content to about 70 per cent, create 300,000 jobs in the oil and gas sector, establish a dry dockyard for the maintenance of ships in-country and create a better business enabling environment and we hope to have a full integration facility for FPSO in Nigeria within the next 10 years.”