The Centre for Marine Surveyors Nigeria has faulted the absence of indigenous companies in the measuring of the Nigeria’s crude oil describing it as a rape of the Nigerian economy by those who carefully orchestrated the development so as to propagate their selfish interests.
Speaking at a roundtable organized by the Maritime Correspondents’ Organization of Nigeria (MARCON) in Lagos recently, the President and Chairman, Board of Trustees of the centre, Prince Adebambo Ademiluyi wondered how Nigerians could ever know how much of crude oil that Nigeria had when it was foreigners who buy the crude, owned the vessels as well as measure the crude for export querrying the Nigerian interest in all of these.
Ademiluyi while pointing out that there was a mentality in Nigeria that anything white or anything foreign was better however regretted that that mentality had really affected the practice of marine surveying in Nigeria adding that there were so many indigenous companies who would not deal with any company that is Nigerian rather they would go for foreign companies just because they were foreign.
“But you see, what do you find out, all those foreign companies, the only human being that is foreign in that company is probably the MD and that MD may not be from anywhere near Europe, he may be from some obscure corner in Asia or India or China but because his skin is white, they say he is a foreigner, so they have more integrity and I want to stand on every authority I know, corruption in all these nations even supersede what is happening in Nigeria, even in countries in Europe.
“So, on what basis do we as Nigerian want to thrust our lives and our businesses in the hands of the foreigners when we have our own brothers and sisters that we can check and make sure that they deliver the goods to us as Nigerians? More so, when you know that the service they are providing is the same, the training they have is the same, some of us even practice better than some of these foreigners we call foreigners.
“So, we challenge that and we actually went to NIMASA and NIMASA welcomed uswith open hands. We went to the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board in Yenegoa, they were very happy to see us and they introduced us to NAPPIMS to say look, these are Nigerians who are doing business in this area and can I tell you? There is no indigenous company that is involved in measuring Nigerian crude. Tell me, how can we ever hear the truth about how much crude that we have? Foreigner is buying the crude, foreigner owns the vessels, foreigner is measuring the crude for export, where is the Nigerian interest”, he queried.
The Centre for Marine Surveyors Nigeria boss added that the centre made presentations to relevant bodies arguing that they too wanted to measure crude since there was no difference between measuring crude and measuring diesel.
He continued,” What is the difference between measuring crude and measuring diesel? Is it not in the hull of the vessels? Your vessel, is it built differently from the diesel or petrol, PMS or DPK vessels? They said it is not difference but you don’t have insurance. So, we said okay, we will pull our resources and get insurance so that when ten companies come together, they pull their resources and have the insurance required to measure the crude. They said okay, come back.
“So, the blackmail is more engineered by foreigners and our brothers and sisters who probably don’t have the love of Nigeria, in fact, don’t even have the love of Nigeria and are interested in their own pockets are the ones propagating it”.
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