Nadaleen Singh

Nige­ria is open for busi­ness to T&T and there are a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties for busi­ness peo­ple "to make good mon­ey" from Africa as there are bil­lion­aires in Nige­ria, says Musa John Jen, Nige­ria's High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T. The High Com­mis­sion­er's com­ments fol­low the vis­it of Niger­ian Pres­i­dent Good­luck Jonathan to T&T last month for T&T's Eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions. One of the com­mit­ments made by Pres­i­dent Jonathan was to send more Niger­ian youths for train­ing in T&T. En­dors­ing the state­ments by his pres­i­dent, the High Com­mis­sion­er said a Niger­ian busi­ness­man had al­ready ex­pressed in­ter­est in start­ing a Na­tion­al En­er­gy Skills Cen­tre (NESC) in Nige­ria, since 600 peo­ple can be trained there as com­pared to 100 here. "Trinidad re­mains one of the best train­ing des­ti­na­tions for stu­dents in this re­gion. We want to repli­cate T&T's NESC in Nige­ria so we can train more peo­ple. The cost im­pli­ca­tion would be less. The mon­ey we spend to train 100 peo­ple, we can use the same amount in Nige­ria to train 600, in­stead of push­ing our peo­ple glob­al­ly all over the place," he said.

Why is T&T's train­ing ex­per­tise so val­ued?

He said: "T&T's train­ing is one of the best I have seen. One, the lan­guage bar­ri­er is not there. You take Nige­ri­ans to Ger­many and they have to learn Ger­man first. It will take more than six months and the du­ra­tion of the train­ing is not sup­posed to be more than one year. You waste a lot of time try­ing to learn an­oth­er lan­guage, it doesn't work. "T&T is at­trac­tive to Nige­ria be­cause our work­ers can hit the ground run­ning. The peo­ple are very friend­ly, very warm, we re­ceived a lot of co-op­er­a­tion from the Gov­ern­ment." Chrome Group chair­man Al­ha­ji Gi­da­do Idris is in­ter­est­ed in col­lab­o­rat­ing with T&T in es­tab­lish­ing a NESC mod­el in Nige­ria and 600 hectares in Nige­ria have been se­cured for the in­sti­tu­tion. The Chrome Group is a multi­bil­lion dol­lar con­glom­er­ate based in Abu­ja, the cap­i­tal of Nige­ria. The lo­gis­tics of how the in­sti­tu­tion would be op­er­at­ed is to be worked out by De­cem­ber 2012. The Chrome Group is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide the fund­ing for the project. "We are not on­ly look­ing at a train­ing com­po­nent alone, we are look­ing at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the mon­eti­sa­tion of the gas. The gas we burn in two or three days in Nige­ria, is what you use in one year." Sin­gling out Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors Ltd (PPG­PL), the High Com­mis­sion­er said there is need for Niger­ian busi­ness peo­ple to part­ner with PPG­PL. "We are not say­ing that they give us the gas for free. We have in­di­vid­ual busi­ness­men there, they can come to­geth­er and put up the mon­ey and set up the nec­es­sary plat­forms and struc­tures that you would need to use, like a joint ven­ture."

Though there is no lo­cal-con­tent pol­i­cy or any pol­i­cy for in­clu­sion of lo­cals in projects start­ed by for­eign com­pa­nies in Nige­ria, there are roy­al­ties and tax­es that must be paid. The roy­al­ties are usu­al­ly be­tween 20 and 30 per cent of the com­pa­ny's net prof­it. But part­ner­ships with Niger­ian busi­ness­es are en­cour­aged be­cause "They un­der­stand the Niger­ian busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment very well and they would be able to fast-track (busi­ness trans­ac­tions)." Asked why no pol­i­cy on lo­cal con­tent had been for­mu­lat­ed, the High Com­mis­sion­er said, "Be­cause of the long years of mil­i­tary rule, we could not for­mu­late lo­cal pol­i­cy. We are just start­ing to do lo­cal-con­tent pol­i­cy for­mu­la­tion. We have not yet reached im­ple­men­ta­tion." With­out lo­cal con­tent pol­i­cy, this meant that the reper­cus­sions were deep for Nige­ria. "When you don't have lo­cal-pol­i­cy for­mu­la­tion, you find that there is no cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty (CSR) and that is what cre­at­ed the prob­lem in the Niger Delta where a lot of farm lands were de­stroyed through oil spillage. The fish­ing lakes were al­so de­stroyed be­cause of spills from oil wells and these com­pa­nies cre­at­ed en­claves. They bring in a lot of their pro­fes­sion­als from over­seas, there is no space for the train­ing of the youths in the area to ben­e­fit from gain­ful em­ploy­ment. The im­me­di­ate en­vi­ron­ment and the in­di­vid­u­als in those en­claves were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the oil spillage. It was re­al­ly un­for­tu­nate but that is what re­al­ly hap­pened." Pol­lu­tion, due to oil spills, stirred re­sent­ment in the so­ci­ety, "es­pe­cial­ly by those who had to suf­fer the con­se­quence of this 'reck­less­ness' on the parts of ma­jor multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions. In the past, there were no safe­guards to en­sure that they put some­thing back in­to the so­ci­ety, so it was just a sit­u­a­tion of ex­ploita­tion, mas­sive ex­ploita­tion." There was need for po­lit­i­cal in­ter­ven­tion by the Niger­ian gov­ern­ment in or­der to find am­i­ca­ble and diplo­mat­ic so­lu­tions to the prob­lem. A de­ci­sion was made for more train­ing to be pro­vid­ed so that Nige­ri­ans could get the op­por­tu­ni­ty for em­ploy­ment in the oil and gas sec­tor. Dra­mat­ic changes were made to the CSR rules and now "there are high­er lev­els of CSR" by for­eign oil com­pa­nies, as schol­ar­ships, hos­pi­tals and oth­er ini­tia­tives were in­tro­duced in­to the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties.

Deep­en­ing ties be­tween the two ter­ri­to­ries can­not hap­pen with­out hav­ing an air­link though, and in 2009 a bi­lat­er­al air-ser­vice agree­ment was signed. It is now time to ac­ti­vate that agree­ment, de­clared the High Com­mis­sion­er.

The High Com­mis­sion­er is propos­ing ei­ther:

1. Port-of-Spain to New York to La­gos

2. Port-of-Spain to At­lanta to La­gos

Why is the route lu­cra­tive for T&T?

"T&T may have an in­ter­est in the es­tab­lish­ment of the air­bridge with Nige­ria and In­dia and to that ex­tent, we be­lieve that it is go­ing to be a very vi­able route be­cause T&T has Nige­ria as a hub, prefer­ably La­gos or Abu­ja, and a lot of Nige­ri­ans go to In­dia on med­ical tourism." Jus­ti­fy­ing his state­ment that there was a mar­ket for T&T/Nige­ria trav­el, the High Com­mis­sion­er said the Niger­ian Sen­ate com­pris­es 109 elect­ed sen­a­tors, 360 mem­bers of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and oth­er elites who would be in­ter­est­ed in trav­el­ling to T&T for va­ca­tion. No longer would Nige­ria be a des­ti­na­tion that T&T na­tion­als read about but es­tab­lish­ing the route would mean that T&T na­tion­als would be able to go to Nige­ria with ease. The Nige­ria High Com­mis­sion cel­e­brates 50 years of re­la­tions with and in T&T. For that pe­ri­od, a to­tal of 1,000 Nige­ri­ans have lived and worked in T&T, of that, 400 are med­ical doc­tors and nurs­es and 30 are pro­fes­sors hold­ing doc­tor­ates at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. Spread across in oth­er re­gions:

Coun­try Num­ber of Niger­ian na­tion­als

T&T 1,000

Suri­name 12

Guyana 40

Unit­ed States 100,000

Asked why would Nige­ri­ans want to leave their coun­try to live else­where, he said Nige­ri­ans are a very "ad­ven­tur­ous" peo­ple and they al­so like the ex­po­sure they get in for­eign coun­tries but they don't stay per­ma­nent­ly in those re­gions. They move on to Cana­da or the Unit­ed States or re­turn to Nige­ria to form their own busi­ness­es. An­oth­er rea­son why Nige­ri­ans would leave their coun­try is "to ac­cess qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion." "Our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is still de­vel­op­ing, so once you are in a for­eign coun­try, your chil­dren will have ac­cess to very good ed­u­ca­tion. It's a colo­nial lega­cy that we in­her­it­ed, we need to fine-tune that. "We un­der­stand the chal­lenges we have in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor, a lot of it is based on what we in­her­it­ed from our colo­nial mas­ters. We need­ed to move to cours­es that ac­tu­al­ly train our youths to take up gain­ful em­ploy­ment when they leave uni­ver­si­ty." The Niger­ian ed­u­ca­tion does not pre­pare you to be com­pet­i­tive in the labour mar­ket and, there­fore, a mod­el re­sem­bling the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T would al­so be looked at, he said.