Mr. Nedo Osayande
Speaking to energy correspondents during the unveiling of NAPE Academy in Lagos, Nedo Osayande said it is going to be an intensive program.
The NAPE Academy will be a replica of Shell’s SITP which is for serious students.
The Physicist who graduated from University of Benin (Uniben) passed through a similar system before venturing into the oil industry via an aptitude test.
According to Osayande, the Academy will give room to train and select the best for the industry.
It has been a concern that many more technocrats and experts like Osayande have retired from the industry and there is need to train those that will project the future.
Excerpts:
What can you tell us about your experience?
Well! I had experience in geosciences and petroleum engineering at Uniben which is my brain child, and I’m particularly happy that I did that, for me is my greatest achievement while I worked in Shell.
To get a platform to be able to do that kind of thing now at this level in the industry is welcome. That’s why I’m here.
From your presentation, the proposed Academy is being positioned as a successor to Shell’s former intensive training program. How will it differ from old model and what measures have been put in place to ensure its long-term sustainability?
Shell had two way approaches in its program, one for graduates, which is called Shell Intensive Training Program SITP I and SITP II which was for technicians. After many years, the SITP I was discontinued and one of the major reasons was funding which was considered expensive.
This time around, it is not going to be something just sponsored by one JV company or any other, it will encompass the entire industry. The advantage that will come with that is first, you would have cost efficiency because the more you put everybody together, there will be efficient spending in what you get as support. Combining of efforts makes it cheaper.
Also, with combine efforts, many partners will come with diverse ideas and enrich the program. They will participate as well in curriculum development and accommodate other interests by putting what they have in various companies. They will be in a position to get their staffs that are seasoned to also teach in this Academy because each course will be planned such that it’s taught by an academic and an industry professional.
But these two sets of people have certain special qualifications. For the academic, it has to be somebody who is industry savvy, and for the industry person, it has to be somebody who is academically grounded. We need to have these two kinds of persons to teach in the Academy.
Various partners will provide opportunity for internship part of the program and in 18 months, we will have in the neighborhood of three to six months internship.
Since it has highest caliber of people teaching and those learning, the partner contributors may also have certain problems which they can refer to the Academy for solution. They have the brain power to address what the challenges are and find solutions to it. In a way, they will also be directly affecting what the partners are interested in before the students graduate.
You were talking about funding because without fund, there is no existence of the Academy. What’s the overall investment plan and time frame before this Academy comes into place?
Also, in your presentation, you made mention of some things that are free for the students. Is the payment free?
Firstly, the program is designed for the students not to pay any fees. Tuition, accommodation and feeding will be free.
If you listened to the representative from First E and P, he did mention that the training program the company does, it has already employed those trained and the students are placed on salary.
The SITP I Shell got students in, and towards the end of the program, they did exams and the company selected from that. But speedily it was modified. They took slightly less than they would have taken in the past and at the time they got in they were already staff; it removes the worry of getting a job.
We are taking the better part of those various earlier programs to try to enrich this Academy. Students will not pay any fees; they’ll be accommodated, but I don’t know yet whether they will get any allowance. I’m not promising that.
But certainly they won’t pay fees and the facilitators will get paid. That means in any case, there will be enhancements by way of equipment which may not yet be donated that the Academy may have to buy or pay for. We will see everywhere money could be spent. The necessity has to be balanced with where money will come from.
Otherwise, we won’t go forward. Where will the money come from? There are various government establishments that have various aspects of their mandate that have to do with education and capacity development.
For example, we expect the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) to participate. NCDMB gets funded from contribution of oil industry by 1%. The accumulation of such money is a lot. It will be beneficial to spend some of that money in supporting an endeavour like NAPE Academy to us because they have a mandate for capacity development and this is one major vehicle which we believe will be an easy win for the Board.
We have Tertiary Education Fund. This is a tertiary education endeavour as well. We expect to get contribution from it. We have Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF). These two various institutions I mentioned are owned by government, they have various elements that contribute to education to start from.
We have the International Oil Companies (IOCs) that have education social performance or education projects. The indigenous producers who are rapidly rising, and are indeed even hungrier for qualified students ready to work in their various companies to work will benefit more than the IOCs.
We expect them to contribute. These contributions should not be too episodic in such that we cannot plan. If we have $2 million kick off, there will be a Governing Board where representatives from these key partners participating in the management of it run, they should be able to come up with annual budgets and plan for sustainability.
We will be interested in having codification or policy making that will guarantee that it enters into their books on annual plans; it’s not something that will go every year cap in hand.
If we learn from what happens at the Center of Excellence for Geosciences and Petroleum Engineering at Uniben, at that time designed a trust deed between the university and Shell which has been taken over now by Renaissance, I’m very happy about that development because of sustainability and continuity, and that trust did stay.
When we opened the last new building which we had built before final departure, I was very impressed. We started with a small building, now it’s expanded, and I heard that Renaissance have bigger plans for it. It gladdens my heart because I participated in it.
I have an endowment there for the best graduating student each year. My heart is still there. This is an opportunity to do something better. I’m glad to be part of this because if we are going to improve on that, it will make me happier.
For the investment, I had said that we will start with $2 million. The Board will look at the money required and begins to plan it into the annual budget.
Why I cannot give you a figure now is because we are not entirely sure which of the facilities will be used.
Our target at the moment is the SITP yard in Jeba Housing Estate because they have all the facilities, but we may need to fine tune some things that may cost money. We do expect that NEPL and ND Western that now own that facility may come up with some bill regarding how much to pay for lease.
They will provide power and it cost money. I do not expect that it will be free of costs, but do not know what it will be. Jeba is in Warri Housing Estate with some number of bungalows.
Another example is at the University of Lagos (Unilag), where SNEPCo donated a Geoscience building. The university will be willing to give us that building with hostel space for students. They have even said they will give one block for the program.
Unilag has guest houses and conference center where facilitators can stay at reasonable costs. The university will supply power with bills. We will be paying facilitators and some university lecturers that may be coming from various other universities. These will all be put together and they will have a better idea regarding how much will be needed on operational cost.
You said this program is for18 months, but the industry is so dynamic with curriculum which includes AI, data, science and industrial analysis. How could this be done within 18 months?
This is going to be an intensive program. If we copy from what Shell did in the past through SITP, the NAPE Academy will also be intensive.
We don’t want to burden the students with distractions of fees that is why we are taking care of everything. Their business is just to come there and concentrate on what will be taught and practice them. The 18 months will include internship period.
The NAPE Academy is for serious students. There will be nothing like hustling and doing any work because is an intensive program void of any distraction.
The second part of the question is that the industry is dynamic. How will the aspect of technology be accommodated in the program?
At the Center of Excellence in Geoscience Center in Uniben an 18 months program. The way it was designed is that 12 months academic work taught by industry and academia, and they do six months internship in the companies. That internship period is what caps in the training period. This is when you can also catch up with whatever dynamics you have in oil industry.
Of course, certain fundamentals will not change. The things that change, we can pick up in the course of the tech view and we are including things like HSE, AI and data analytics.
Who ensures quality control in this Academy?
There will be a Governing Board in this Academy. This Governing Board will have set down in terms of how it checks, manages and how it monitors success. There’s a monitoring and evaluation aspect where you monitor how it is going and what tweaks you need to make to correct. Should anything be drifting away from how you desire it to be, the governing board takes cares of it.
Will it not be politicized?
If you listen to what I said, one of the last things was that there were two risks we were thinking of. One, was politicization, which we work very hard against not to have the center politicized.
Two, is funding stability which we have already discussed. We are going to make it attractive to students so that they will work hard to get it. We expect stiff competition to get in and I had mentioned that only people with Second Class Upper 2.1, but we have discovered that in some universities Second Class Lower 2.2 are better than two ones 2.1.
We may expand the net to include 2.2, but the filtration will come from aptitude test.
I remembered my personal experience when I was in Uniben and I read Physics. Shell at the time in early 1980s came around and it pulled all of us together in engineering, physics, mathematics probably about 100 of us and we were subjected to aptitude tests. At the end of that test, they submitted six of us. That’s how I came into the industry.
Aptitude test is in good faith.
When should we expect the Academy?
I had also mentioned that it will be in two years. I know that if Madam President has her way, she wants it to be in six months.
But I have lived through this kind of experience before and I know that the amount of hope that is still required is immense. If we are to even start to get students today, I don’t see it taking less than six months to go through these rigorous test cases.
By the way, at the COA in Benin, in addition to the testing, they also do some kind of interview that mimics the interview used to judge in those days. Beyond the academics, even doing well in the aptitude, there will be a look-alike and employment-type interview to ensure that it’s not just academics. There are other elements that come into building a successful facility.
The preparation for how to get in students, which facilitators to bring in from the outside to vet that they are academically grounded, and to also vet those that will be coming from the universities to ensure that they are industry savvy, take time.
Practically, I do not see it starting on time but if we can make it shorter, it will be good. A representative from University of Lagos Unilag was speaking with me a moment ago, saying they can make it happen in six months.
They are very keen, but in all probability, if a thorough job is done, I will expect it to be about two years.
You mentioned somebody from the University of Lagos speaking with you about NAPE Academy taking place in the next six months. What exactly is the cost or infrastructure that will be the deciding factor of the centers to be used?
In selecting locations, we put down number of criteria to tick the box and awarded marks to those criteria and use the weightings of those marks to arrive at the top two which is what I mentioned.
It is not one element that’s the decider. For example, if you are going to have facilitators from the industry, it has to be easy for them to get to the place to give a lecture for accessibility. It has to be safe to travel there.
There are places you cannot get to by air. It has to be long road distances, which may be get one exposed. The people we will be getting from the the oil companies are important we don’t want to them to be exposed to dangers.
We are also looking at what kind of infrastructure already exists there. We don’t expect people to be using candle lights.
If we have steady power supply, for example, I know they have in Jeba, when I was there; it has good backup power systems like in Unilag.
NEPL and ND Western have a Board and they cannot take different decisions without going through certain processes and decide what they want to do.
Just like in the university there is senate system and it also takes time.
There is administrative Staff College in Badagry, but to get somebody from an oil establishment in Victoria Island to drive to that place to give lecture will be a challenge.
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