By Ejekwu Chidiebere
Secretary of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), Engr. Felix Omatsola Ogbe had on Tuesday inspected the ongoing training of 305 youths in specialised oil and gas industry skills at the Centre for Marine and Offshore Technology Development (CMOTD), Rivers State University (RSU).
The trainings which Energy Window International (Media) learnt are sponsored by the NCDMB, will cover seven technical areas including Automation, Instrumentation and Control, Mechanical/Process Piping and System Design/ Pressure Vessel and Heat Exchanges Design (PV-ELITE), Electrical Power Transformer Repairs and Maintenance, and Industrial/Practical Ship Design and Construction. Other specialist areas to be covered by the training include Oil Well Surveillance and Enhancement Analysis Training, Capacity Building on Big Data Analytics and International Class Welding, Fabrication and Qualification.
The programme which is designed for four months NCDMB twitted will form part of its Human Capacity Development initiative, curated to close identified indigenous manpower competency gaps. Participants were selected from the Nigerian Oil and Gas Joint Qualification System (NOGICJQS) which is the oil industry’s repository of human and technical competencies the Board said.
Engr. Felix Omatsola Ogbe has in his remarks charged the participants to make good value of the opportunity, emphasizing that the skills they are acquiring are highly sought after in the oil and gas industry and beyond. He assured that NCDMB would continue to train Nigerians in key skills required in the operations of the oil industry and linkage sectors, and create employment opportunities, as part of the agency’s mandate, and to support the actualisation of the country’s industry growth.
Energy Window International (Media) gathered that Engr. Ogbe also visited the Advanced Marine Engineering and Offshore Engineering Research Centre that was erected at the university by an international oil company as part of the Nigerian Content institutional strengthening initiative. He promised that the furnishing and partitioning of the building would be executed so that the building could be used accordingly. He also said he would find out why the completion of the staff quarters which the Board set up at the university has been delayed.
Energy Window International (Media) also learnt that Felix Ogbe and his team were received by the Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof. Isaac Zeb-Obipi, the National Chairman Nigerian Institution of Marine Engineers and Naval Architects (NIMENA)/Chairman, Management Board, CMOTD, Engr. Dr. Sylvanus Eferebo, Dean Faculty of Engineering, Prof. J. Akpa and other management personnel of the university.
Dr. Eferebo informed that Rivers State University was designated by the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) as the centre of excellence in marine engineering because of the school’s specialty in the area of study, with three centres in marine studies in it to its advantage.
He also affirmed that 70 percent of trainers for CMOTD’s programmes has always been selected from the oil and gas industry and other sectors, with 30 percent enlisted from the university. The essence, he explained, was to ensure that the trainings fulfilled the needed Nigeria’s industry requirements while complying with COREN’s regulations for industry’s representatives in playing key roles in churning out the right professionals in Nigeria.