I learnt so much about the operations of a multinational oil company from the couple of years I spent at the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) in Port Harcourt as a graduate student on an NNPC-enabled data-collection exercise to complete my Masters of Technology (MTech) degree in Applied Geophysics here at the Federal University of Technology, Minna.
A multinational oil company is formally structured and, at Shell, we got regaled with catchphrases like “best practices,” “health, safety, and environment (HSE),” “new way of working (NWW),” etc. Historically, Shell was a key player in Nigeria’s downstream fuel-retail sub-sector (as were Esso, Mobil, BP, and others). At the present time, I have been a key observer of the set-up and operations of the downstream fuel-retail business of the multinational Total.
It has occurred to me that, instead of a plethora of one-man and most inefficient fuel-retailing outfits, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) should sit down with Total and its multinational ilk in this fuel-retail business, draw up frameworks for Total-centric operations of these polluting and decaying filling stations, encourage these third-rate players to sell off their DPR licenses and have Total and its ilk takeover wide-area networking operations of fuel-retail business.
If I were the president of Nigeria, with a compliant senate and national assembly on my side at all times, I’d fast-track a quasi-decree empowering the DPR to de-license private operators who do not care and cannot comply with the cost-centric requirements of HSE. I’d then sit down with the honchos of Total and extract a commitment that every filling station that is branded “Total” spread across the wide extent of Nigeria should play a huge role in the national employment scheme by having a payroll of staff who runs a six-hourly shift over a 24-hour period.
I will go a bit further by positing that my government would partner with Total to ensure that the staff at a particular filling station are quartered at dedicated “staff quarters” for that particular filling station in homesteads that are sustainably managed but which are of very high and livable standards. With a manageable pay-check structure reflective of the realities on ground, I think I could talk Total and its ilk into creating a million jobs in just that fuel-retail sub-sector across Nigeria.
What I sense is that multinationals are willing to provide the right working environment for their Nigerian staff if the Nigerian government knows how to intelligently engage these multinationals as well as offering palatable tax rebates to them. Governance isn’t entirely rocket science. It is more of common sense, empathy, and will.
Sunday Adole Jonah,
Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology,
Minna, Niger state