By Noma S Patrick
At a time when Africa (black especially) has practically reduced itself to being at the mercy of foreign companies and consortiums with quite expatriate management and technical-knowhow in the business and technology of exploring and transmuting it’s abundant natural resources into values that are on competitive demand around the globe, one great Nigerian company stands out as an epitome of a daring possibility, workability, success and can-do corporate spirit in managing and making a formidable GDP booster of our own resources all by ourselves. Led by an absolutely Nigerian management team, the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Ltd, popular known as NLNG, stands boldly as a global champion in the business of liquefaction, sale and shipment of natural and petroleum gas as well as in the art, science and technology of world-class management.
With the great accomplishment recorded in management, technological capacity, revenue generation and consistent business growth, a model of “wholly Nigerian” industrial and corporate success like NLNG is worth drawing the attention of the Nigerian and indeed all African governments to, with the view of inspiring a replication of such models to maximize resource utilization and take advantage of other important accompanying possibilities like human resource development, the growth of auxiliary companies and businesses and the development of other industries.
This is even more so considering the realities of failures of indigenous companies, public corporations and government institutions that abound; when our only way out has defied growing above the lowest ebb of surrendering our natural resources to foreign firms in return for crumbs falling from the real business thereby largely denying ourselves any opportunity to practically learn how things work and how the businesses are done and shutting off any possibility for doing it ourselves one day; when, for some uncanny reasons, we just seem to love to work against our own progress and killing our own investments by ourselves. Now what makes NLNG such a beacon of hope worthy of emulation and how can government take advantage of the revelation of possibilities that hitherto seem to be only attainable with firms and expatriate professionals? The paragraphs that follow examine some of the key things that make the company the corporate champion it has become today.
Being a company modelled to be run privately with a 50:50 investment stake from the Nigerian Government on one part and the trio of Shell, Total and Eni on the other, a good financial management autonomy is ensured cutting off the chances of any undue interference from the shareholding parties. This is as a result of the fact that such a system checks and balances itself through the corporality of three separate autonomous authority that form the stakeholding parties of the company which include the Nigerian government, the three International Oil Companies and the company management. With the check and balance nature of the authority structure of NLNG, only that which is right, ethical and in line with the laws and terms of agreement that set-up the business is possible. This helps the company in maintaining a decent financial accountability and responsibility and upholding ethical standards in conducting other management operations for the company.
The legislation establishing the company which forms part of the enabling environment provided by the government ensures that stakeholders get proportionately excellent reward for their investment. A recent move born out of the frustration created by Nigeria’s economic recession attempted to undermine the legislation. Having made to understand the importance of leaving the NLNG act as it is, law makers seem to have finally seen shelving that move is in the best interest of Nigeria as it concerns that industry.
The caliber of persons that have occupied management positions over the years the NLNG has been in existence is the dream of any company with the desire for a global ranking. From top class graduates of some of the best Nigerian universities like ABU Zaria, University of Ibadan, University Lagos and the likes, to those coming from Harvard and having management experience with top shots like the Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, KPMG etc., competence and capacity has been the rule for the company when it comes to hiring its managers. These individuals have been able to provide world class management and leadership to the company through the years consequently growing it from strength to strength. This has help in making the NLNG a leader in the Nigerian corporate circle.
It is common corporate and institutional sense that leadership can be totally handicap without the right people down the hierarchical ladder to work with and synergize for productivity and efficiency. Unlike other conventional government owned companies and institutions in Nigeria where recruitment is done simply because a minister or senator wants to show how influential he is in “helping” his people with jobs, when NLNG carry out recruitment exercise, the company follow the international standard best practice to hire the best hands and brains to work for it. The company is strictly profit oriented and therefore condone no form of irresponsible arbitrary recruitments that don’t take into consideration the fact about the true need of manpower as it relates to job reality and profitability objectives.
High quality British graduate standard psychometric aptitude test produced by companies like the SHL Group and KSL is used as a first stage assessment of fresh graduates for recruitment into the Graduate Trainee positions. This is then followed by standard Assessment Centre Exercise that involves activities like group work, fact finding exercise, presentations, one-to-one interview and the likes. Rigorous process like this helps in providing the company with the best human resources the Nigerian labor market can offer making it possible for the company to compete favorably in running its business and operations with its International Oil Company’s counterparts. Further to this, the pay and welfare package has been so competitive that it has become typical seeing graduates preferring NLNG to the international oil companies in choosing between employment offers – a principal necessity in not just attracting the best to work for the company, but also retaining them.
The company is a very socially responsible corporate citizen in relating to its host community and the Nation as a whole. It has establish a tradition of providing full scholarship for postgraduate studies to the best universities around the world for the indigenous people of the host community and other Nigerians and sponsors the Nigerian Prize for Science and the Nigerian Prize for Literature as a way of rewarding and encouraging excellence. The local government area hosting the company’s production facility and staff residence, Bonny Island, is on twenty four-hours-a-day and seven-days-a-week power supply courtesy of the company
When investment and corporate leadership structure like that of the NLNG is adopted in public companies and corporations in Nigeria and other African countries, all business operations and decisions will be put under appropriate and better check and control with a resulting decimation of corrupt practices that have been the bane of corporate success in this part of the world. Only ethical practices that assures mutual respect among investors and their management team will reign with such a structure.
Take the Ajaokuta Steel complex in Nigeria that has refused to work despite over 98% project completion since as far back as 1994 as a typical example. Although politicians never come out to tell Nigerians the truth about its workability preferring to continue to play politics and budgetary games with the whole project, there is a technical hitch that has to do with the coal source that is needed as fuel for the smelting of ore into iron and steel. This has been the hindrance for a successful production takeoff in the company and the major dissuasion from any further “sincere” interest in the complex by both government and private investors. The huge coal deposits in Nigeria are all highly contaminated by sulfur, the most dangerous and stubborn impurity in steel, and as a result no in-country fuel source to drive the technology of the complex. But an investment set-up like that of the NLNG in which Nigeria partner with a sulfur-free coal producing country like South Africa (SA), and recently Botswana and Mozambique, can go a long way in tackling problems that are even beyond just lack of good coal. Where the partnering country, say SA, acquire some stake in the complex by supplying Nigeria with coal through the gulf of guinea coastline and providing part of the manpower for the management team from its pool of experienced mineral processing professionals, a business relationship can be set up for great success for the steel complex. A check and balance set-up that will ensure only what is due as gains to the respective investors and wages for management and workers gets to these stakeholders will be a vital accompanying advantage and the path to a formidable industrial and economic prosperity will once again be laid before us as partnering Nations.
The Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Ltd. is a company an investment structure worth replicating
At a time when Africa (black especially) has practically reduced itself to being at the mercy of foreign companies and consortiums with quite expatriate management and technical-knowhow in the business and technology of exploring and transmuting it’s abundant natural resources into values that are on competitive demand around the globe, one great Nigerian company stands out as an epitome of a daring possibility, workability, success and can-do corporate spirit in managing and making a formidable GDP booster of our own resources all by ourselves. Led by an absolutely Nigerian management team, the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Ltd, popular known as NLNG, stands boldly as a global champion in the business of liquefaction, sale and shipment of natural and petroleum gas as well as in the art, science and technology of world-class management.
With the great accomplishment recorded in management, technological capacity, revenue generation and consistent business growth, a model of “wholly Nigerian” industrial and corporate success like NLNG is worth drawing the attention of the Nigerian and indeed all African governments to, with the view of inspiring a replication of such models to maximize resource utilization and take advantage of other important accompanying possibilities like human resource development, the growth of auxiliary companies and businesses and the development of other industries.
This is even more so considering the realities of failures of indigenous companies, public corporations and government institutions that abound; when our only way out has defied growing above the lowest ebb of surrendering our natural resources to foreign firms in return for crumbs falling from the real business thereby largely denying ourselves any opportunity to practically learn how things work and how the businesses are done and shutting off any possibility for doing it ourselves one day; when, for some uncanny reasons, we just seem to love to work against our own progress and killing our own investments by ourselves. Now what makes NLNG such a beacon of hope worthy of emulation and how can government take advantage of the revelation of possibilities that hitherto seem to be only attainable with firms and expatriate professionals? The paragraphs that follow examine some of the key things that make the company the corporate champion it has become today.
Being a company modelled to be run privately with a 50:50 investment stake from the Nigerian Government on one part and the trio of Shell, Total and Eni on the other, a good financial management autonomy is ensured cutting off the chances of any undue interference from the shareholding parties. This is as a result of the fact that such a system checks and balances itself through the corporality of three separate autonomous authority that form the stakeholding parties of the company which include the Nigerian government, the three International Oil Companies and the company management. With the check and balance nature of the authority structure of NLNG, only that which is right, ethical and in line with the laws and terms of agreement that set-up the business is possible. This helps the company in maintaining a decent financial accountability and responsibility and upholding ethical standards in conducting other management operations for the company.
The legislation establishing the company which forms part of the enabling environment provided by the government ensures that stakeholders get proportionately excellent reward for their investment. A recent move born out of the frustration created by Nigeria’s economic recession attempted to undermine the legislation. Having made to understand the importance of leaving the NLNG act as it is, law makers seem to have finally seen shelving that move is in the best interest of Nigeria as it concerns that industry.
The caliber of persons that have occupied management positions over the years the NLNG has been in existence is the dream of any company with the desire for a global ranking. From top class graduates of some of the best Nigerian universities like ABU Zaria, University of Ibadan, University Lagos and the likes, to those coming from Harvard and having management experience with top shots like the Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, KPMG etc., competence and capacity has been the rule for the company when it comes to hiring its managers. These individuals have been able to provide world class management and leadership to the company through the years consequently growing it from strength to strength. This has help in making the NLNG a leader in the Nigerian corporate circle.
It is common corporate and institutional sense that leadership can be totally handicap without the right people down the hierarchical ladder to work with and synergize for productivity and efficiency. Unlike other conventional government owned companies and institutions in Nigeria where recruitment is done simply because a minister or senator wants to show how influential he is in “helping” his people with jobs, when NLNG carry out recruitment exercise, the company follow the international standard best practice to hire the best hands and brains to work for it. The company is strictly profit oriented and therefore condone no form of irresponsible arbitrary recruitments that don’t take into consideration the fact about the true need of manpower as it relates to job reality and profitability objectives.
High quality British graduate standard psychometric aptitude test produced by companies like the SHL Group and KSL is used as a first stage assessment of fresh graduates for recruitment into the Graduate Trainee positions. This is then followed by standard Assessment Centre Exercise that involves activities like group work, fact finding exercise, presentations, one-to-one interview and the likes. Rigorous process like this helps in providing the company with the best human resources the Nigerian labor market can offer making it possible for the company to compete favorably in running its business and operations with its International Oil Company’s counterparts. Further to this, the pay and welfare package has been so competitive that it has become typical seeing graduates preferring NLNG to the international oil companies in choosing between employment offers – a principal necessity in not just attracting the best to work for the company, but also retaining them.
The company is a very socially responsible corporate citizen in relating to its host community and the Nation as a whole. It has establish a tradition of providing full scholarship for postgraduate studies to the best universities around the world for the indigenous people of the host community and other Nigerians and sponsors the Nigerian Prize for Science and the Nigerian Prize for Literature as a way of rewarding and encouraging excellence. The local government area hosting the company’s production facility and staff residence, Bonny Island, is on twenty four-hours-a-day and seven-days-a-week power supply courtesy of the company
When investment and corporate leadership structure like that of the NLNG is adopted in public companies and corporations in Nigeria and other African countries, all business operations and decisions will be put under appropriate and better check and control with a resulting decimation of corrupt practices that have been the bane of corporate success in this part of the world. Only ethical practices that assures mutual respect among investors and their management team will reign with such a structure.
Take the Ajaokuta Steel complex in Nigeria that has refused to work despite over 98% project completion since as far back as 1994 as a typical example. Although politicians never come out to tell Nigerians the truth about its workability preferring to continue to play politics and budgetary games with the whole project, there is a technical hitch that has to do with the coal source that is needed as fuel for the smelting of ore into iron and steel. This has been the hindrance for a successful production takeoff in the company and the major dissuasion from any further “sincere” interest in the complex by both government and private investors. The huge coal deposits in Nigeria are all highly contaminated by sulfur, the most dangerous and stubborn impurity in steel, and as a result no in-country fuel source to drive the technology of the complex. But an investment set-up like that of the NLNG in which Nigeria partner with a sulfur-free coal producing country like South Africa (SA), and recently Botswana and Mozambique, can go a long way in tackling problems that are even beyond just lack of good coal. Where the partnering country, say SA, acquire some stake in the complex by supplying Nigeria with coal through the gulf of guinea coastline and providing part of the manpower for the management team from its pool of experienced mineral processing professionals, a business relationship can be set up for great success for the steel complex. A check and balance set-up that will ensure only what is due as gains to the respective investors and wages for management and workers gets to these stakeholders will be a vital accompanying advantage and the path to a formidable industrial and economic prosperity will once again be laid before us as partnering Nations.
The Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas Ltd. is a company an investment structure worth replicating
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