Mazi Sam Azoka Onyechi (KSC) is the President of Oil and Gas Trainers Association of Nigeria (OGTAN) and the Founder of Inspection and Test Nigeria Limited, which has a training arm specializing in Welder Training and Non-Destructive Testing Training, among other skill-based trainings with internationally recognised certifications, including the American Society of Nondestructive Testing (ASNT), ISO 9712 (Independent Certification Schemes), International Institute of Welding (IIW), and The Welding Federation (TWF) Schemes. In this Interview with Yange Ikyaa, he spoke extensively about what OGTAN is doing to help Nigerian higher institutions of learning to meet up with the current skill demand of the nation’s oil and gas industry. Excerpts:
You made some very important points over there about training in making sure that we have the industry capacity, especially for our young graduates to be industry ready; how precisely are you doing this?
Like I said, that is what OGTAN is doing as a major industry Association created by the NCDMB in 2010, because OGTAN is an umbrella body of all kinds of training providers in the industry, and the trainings we do are skill-based trainings; they are not what you learn in a formal school setting. They are practical and career specific trainings that are focused on what is required in the industry.
If you want to build a career in quality control as a welding inspector, you don’t learn it in any university and the certification is not given in the universities; it is not a degree, but you get something like a CSWIP certificate (Certification Scheme for Welding Inspection Personnel), which is a British certification; or you go for an American Welding Society Welding (AWS) Inspector Certificate. Also, if you want to be a Lifting Inspector, you go for LEEA (Lifting Equipment Engineers Association); and if you want to be a Rope Access Technician or Engineer, you go for IRATA (International Rope Access Trade Association).
So, the truth remains that these are things you can’t get in the university, but what we are trying to do is to get the universities to understand that you need to do a little more, collaborate more; if possible, tweak your curriculum a little more and, then, more importantly, do career guidance and counselling for your students so that when they come out of school, they are not confused but they will already have an idea where they want to fit in if they wish to work in the oil and gas industry.
That is what OGTAN is doing, and we have our Young Professionals Forum, and that forum is designed to mentor undergraduates and young graduates, especially people in the science and engineering fields, which are generally what are required as background education for careers in the industry. So, what the forum is designed to do is catch them young, teach them what they need to know, offer them internship opportunities with some of our members, and then begin to guide them towards careers in the future so that by the time they come out of school, they already have an idea of what to do and where they are headed.
Maybe one would say I want to work in the oil and gas industry and I want to be a rigger, I want to be a driller, I want to be a wellhead tester, I want to be a welding inspector, I want to be a lifting inspector, or a rope access engineer; as these are the various aspects of the industry value chain from upstream to midstream and downstream. We offer career opportunities in all of them. They are mostly not white collar jobs, they are blue collar jobs, but they pay very well and give you a guaranteed future in the industry.
You have made mention of how huge the salaries could be for your trainees after they have been duly trained and certified by you. Could you please throw more light on the exact amount earned by such certified personnel in the industry?
For instance, a rope access engineer, let’s say a rope access level 3, IRATA level 3 technician, earns an average of N50,000 to N100,000 per day working in the fields offshore. And he could be an engineer, a mechanical engineering graduate, it doesn’t matter; he could also be a school certificate holder, West African Senior School Certificate, with science background. So, you can see that it doesn’t depend on your level of education but the skills or aptitude you have; if you have it, you have it.
And the beauty of what we are doing is that you can take it anywhere. IRATA is internationally accepted; LEEA is internationally accepted; CSWIP certification is internationally accepted; the American Welding Society, API (American Petroleum Institute) certification, the International Institute of Welding certification; they are all internationally accepted because these are industry driven, tried and tested and accredited schemes of people that play in this market.
The industry is owned by these guys basically and we are only now trying to annex the competencies and the skillsets for domestication and domiciliation, in line with the local content goals of NCDMB. That is what we do currently; it is working well and we are moving it forward so that, soon, we will own them as well on the same principles and accreditation portfolios of the Western world. That would make them even more accessible and affordable to our people.
Based on the educational systems of our country, we have issues where students are often victimized and you see extremely brilliant students who top the chart of their senior school certificate examination in their states and then move to the university and come out with a pass or a third class degree, not because it reflects what they are but just because the lecturers do frustrate them. How do you help people who are so victimized to use their natural brilliance and excel in the labour market, since engineering is more about skills and not the class of degree carried by someone?
It is quite unfortunate that Africa is doing that; we know it happens, but we are saying they should not give up hope because, like I said before, they can leverage these trainings that we offer. We don’t ask you whether or not you are a graduate. In fact, 80 percent of the trainings we do just require you to have a science background, have cognitive skills and aptitude for the kind of work area you desire to work in, exception of only a few.
For instance, if you want to be an international welding engineer, then it is compulsory that you must be an engineer before then. But if you want to be an international welder certified under the International Institute of Welding or The Welding Federation (TWF) Scheme, then you don’t need to be a graduate. If you know how to read and write, it is good enough.
I am the President of OGTAN but I also run a company, which is a member of OGTAN and that was how I became the President of OGTAN. The company is called Inspection and Tests Nigeria Limited and we have a training arm, which is called ITL Training and Certification Limited. So, we do these welder trainings from International welder to international welding engineer, we do NDT trainings, Non-Destructive Testing, from Level 1 to Level 3, an ASNT (American Society of Nondestructive Testing) recognized qualification.
We also do the NDT on ISO 9712 Certification System and you don’t need to be a graduate, you just need to have a science background and then the commitment. So, they are practical skills; you learn them, you apply them, you have the certification, and that’s it. After that, you have a career plan and you earn non-stop because the industry requires you at all times across the globe. You can also upscale your certifications, growing from one professional level to another.
Obviously, you get your pool of students that you need to train, or trainees, from anywhere; but how are schools particularly partnering with you, because there are also people that may be coming from there too?
Yes, we are trying to make them to partner with us, that’s why I said that OGTAN has a University Liaison Commission as a department of OGTAN and its role is to see how we can impact the universities; how we can make them understand what we are doing, to see how they can tweak their curriculum a little bit to accommodate skills that the industry requires, even just as introductory training content, and foster useful partnerships with us.
They don’t have to be specialists in those areas yet in the university, but it is something they need to introduce to their students and then also encourage them to be young professional members of OGTAN, so that they could begin to reap the benefits of industry knowledge, awareness, career guidance, mentorship, and internship programmes that we do, and this will help them understand how the industry is playing.
So, we are working with them because at the end of the day, education is important to make a professional industry player. In as much as it is not a requirement for everybody, yet, a trained mind is better at learning and applying learnt skills than an untrained mind. That is why we are looking at the universities as a major area of harvest for trainees and candidates.
What you are telling me here is what I can call trademark educational measures, but we seem not to know about this and I am hearing about these things for the first time. So, how are you trying to forge partnerships with the media in order to make sure that these things effectively go out to the public?
We have been having our conferences, our AGM Lecture Series and Business Technical Forums where we have been actively interacting with the media so that they can help spread the word. This, we are committed to continue doing and to also expand our scope of engagement with the media, so that the public can take advantage of the information available and adequately benefit from it.