NCDMB launches in-house Academy for knowledge -sharing among staff, stakeholders

As part of efforts to enhance the capacity of its staff to effectively lead and regulate the oil and gas industry, the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB), on Thursday inaugurated its LearnFest Lecture Series, a platform for continuous learning among staff and oil and gas industry stakeholders.

LearnFest, an initiative under the Nigerian Content Academy (NCA), a specialised knowledge-sharing and training arm of the agency, will provide trainings on the mandate and inner workings of the Board.

Attended by all staff at the corporate headquarters in Yenagoa, the three-hour event was focused on raising awareness of the different directorates of the organisation, their constituent divisions and departments, as well as their specific responsibilities and how they function individually and collectively to advance corporate goals and objectives.

In a promo video, the Academy explained that NCDMB’s knowledge is spread across seven directorates and each has its own mandate, processes, expertise, responsibilities, and way of creating value.

It added that knowledge becomes more powerful when it does not exist in silos but moves from one department to the other with handshakes of different units.

According to the Academy, LearnFest is intended to help staff understand “how everything fits together,” the big picture, with respect to the mandate of the Board as well as institutional processes, practices, culture, and relationships. “When we understand what others do, we collaborate better, support one another better, and work as one integrated ecosystem,” it added.

In opening remarks at the event, the Director, Capacity Building Directorate, Abayomi Bamidele, stated that the LearnFest Lecture Series was informed by the need to create an understanding of Nigerian Content tools and processes among staff and other oil and gas industry stakeholders.

Industry players, he explained, need to understand and interpret the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development (NOGICD) Act, 2010, operational principles as enshrined in the NCDMB Guideline for Nigerian Content Human Capital Development Implementation Strategy, the Nigerian Content Compliance Certificate (NCCC), Nigerian Content Plan (NCP), statutory reporting and matters relating to expatriate quota.LearnFest, he pointed out, “will make our work easier.”

He disclosed that industry operators and service companies, industry associations such as the Oil and Gas Trainers Association of Nigeria (OGTAN), academic institutions, and ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), have been writing to the Academy to express interest in sending their staff for the specialised training provided there.

Bamidele further stated that the NCA is building a faculty, and that the Lecture Series is a way of preparing the grounds for its take-off. According to him, “The people presenting [the lectures] could form part of our faculty,” and those attending the event are expected to give feedback on the suitability of such resource persons for the said roles.

He also said that the Management of the Board has approved the use of the Board’s purpose-built facility in Opolo, along the Opolo-Elebele Road in Yenagoa as a centre for the NCA training programmes.

In the first presentation under the Lecture Series, the Manager, Planning and Policy Development Department, Mofe Megbele, spoke on the theme “Understanding the Activities and Processes of the Planning, Research and Statistics Directorate,” with subheadings such as “Operating Framework for Planning Research and Statistics (PRS),” “Overview of Planning and Policy Development Department (PPD),” “Expatriate Quota,” and “Inter-Directorate/Division Relations,” “Research and Development Programme,” “Technology Commercialisation and Innovation,” “Overview of R&D Infrastructure,” “NOGIC JQS/NOGIC JQS User Communication,” “NCCF Objectives,”and “E-Marketplace and Stakeholders Engagement.”

He said the Directorate comprised two major Divisions, namely, PPD and Research and Statistics Development Division,” both of which are headed by General Managers. PPD, he explained, was established in September 2018 under Section 70 of the NOGICD Act, and has been responsible for “policies and guidelines for internal and external stakeholders,” whose implementation it also monitors.

The LearnFest Lecture Series will hold monthly for the next nine months, with a specific Directorate featured in each edition. Attendance, online and in-person, is mandatory for all staff of the NCDMB, while other oil and gas industry stakeholders could participate in subsequent editions.