Nigeria to amend local content law

ABUJA, January 29, 2018 – The Ad hoc Committee on Local Content has called on the Nigerian Senate to amend the country’s Local Content Act after alleged regularities in the contracts for the Egina project, local media reported on Monday.

“From what we are discovering in this investigation, it is clear that the Local Content Act is not achieving much result, with Nigeria losing billions in expatriated hard currency and not much local skill or transfer of technology taking place,” Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, the committee’s chairman, told Vanguard.

“We have a case of award of a contract of USD 42 million to a supposedly local company by Total Upstream Nigeria Limited under the Egina Project, with Total making direct payment to another foreign company on behalf of the local company in just a pipeline procurement contract without the money passing through the Nigerian company,” he said, adding that the committee had also discovered cases of “unqualified foreign companies” bagging large contracts.

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