With increasing foreign direct investments in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI), there is a need to increasingly boost the human capital workforce. ADETOLA BADEMOSI writes on MDPHC’s moves at increasing the pool of experts in the sector.
The Niger Delta Power Holding Company Limited, (NDPHC) in an effort to boost skilled manpower in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) recently engaged 36 young Nigerian engineering graduates for a year internship programme.
The move, which would become an annual practice, is intended to offer hands-on opportunity to beneficiaries for a possible career path in the power industry.
The internship program, according to the Company’s General Manager, Human Resources, Mrs. Funke Nwankwo, is a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative that focuses on career growth and development for the Nigerian Engineering graduates to work and learn for a period of 12 months.
“It ensures that young engineering graduates get the right training from seasoned professionals across our power plants. They will get first hand interaction with how our power plants work in real life,” she.
With participants selected from the six geopolitical zones across the country, the young professionals garner experience across the power value chain, where they are given the opportunity to work across different departments within the power plants during the period.
Executive Director, Corporate Services, NDPHC, Nkechi Mba said the concept of the internship programme was to: “enable graduates of engineering to have practical experience because we found out over the years that we had the best resources in NDPHC in terms of power sector engineering knowledge and we wanted to pass that on. And also help young engineering graduates to be able to access that knowledge that would give them an advantage in trying to find jobs in the sector or finding a career path.
“It is not really a recruitment exercise but because NDPHC has the largest power sector assets, the programme gives the graduates an advantage”, she added.
The power sector has over the years witnessed various reforms across the value chain, spanning generation, distribution and transmission. While there has been growing investments in capital and development projects in the sector as well as efforts to boost the human-capital workforce, there is a need for key players within the value chain scale up these efforts.
The drive to achieve this and more, led the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to issue its “Regulations on National Content Development for the Power Sector, 2014” which is aimed at promoting the deliberate utilization of Nigerian human and material resources, goods, works and services across the value chain of the Nigerian electricity supply industry.
This was due to the influx of foreign direct investment and in turn the creation of new opportunities for the provision of goods and services to the sector.
It is to this end that NERC had issued this Regulation to ensure that indigenous companies also develop capacity to benefit from the expanding sector.
The Regulation puts in place the legal and operational framework for the development of local content making it mandatory that first consideration is given to the use of Nigerian goods and services in the sector.
More importantly, it seeks to encourage Nigerian content in all projects, operations, activities and transactions in the NESI by utilising Nigerian human and material resources, goods, works and services.
The eight part Regulation is subdivided into: General Provisions; Nigerian Content and Project Execution; Nigerian Content and Employment; Acquisition of Technology; Professional Services; NESI Nigerian Content Consultative Forum; Reporting, Compliance and Enforcement; and Miscellaneous provisions.
Legal Foundation
According to NERC, the Regulation is legally binding to all stakeholders across the value chain of the sector.
It said this is to promote deliberate use of Nigerian human and material resources, goods and services in the NESI, opening the industry at all levels to involve Nigerian experts, building capabilities in the country to support increased investment and leveraging existing and future investment to stimulate the growth of Nigerian and Nigeria-located enterprise.
When in 2019, the Federal Government announced the commencement of implementation of the Regulations, the then Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, highlighted the necessity for Nigeria to develop local capacity in the power sector in order to minimize its dependence on foreign equipment and service.
He had stated that the regulations were in line with the Federal Government’s Executive Order 005, 2018 which was issued to promote the use of Nigerian content in contracts and services in the country’s engineering and science sectors.
The Regulations specify, in its Schedules, the expectations of the Commission with respect to the minimum requirement of Nigerian content in the various sub-sectors: Generation, Transmission and Distribution.
Some of the expectations are that Generating Companies (Gencos) must engage manpower that is sourced 100% locally in the construction of foundations for power generation turbines, transformer plinths, control rooms and cable trenches as well as other civil works for power plants.
Bearing this in mind, NDPHC’s move to annualize the internship programme for young graduate engineers would no doubt increase the pool of experts in the sector.
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