The Nigerian Airforce and Mudiame International Limited, an indigenous oil servicing firm, Nigeria have entered into partnership, which will see to the reduction of capital flight in importing expatriates, oversee training and maintenance of equipment, especially for calibration, welding and non-destructive testing of aircraft and other equipment.
The partnership which is aimed at manufacturing of equipment locally and helping other African countries, especially in the areas of oil and gas servicing and domestication of key skills needed in the Airforce, Naval Force and allied industries is an attempt to reduce over dependence on foreign countries, especially Europe and America.
The development which is anticipated to grow local content in the country is coming at a time when the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board in conjunction with Nigerian Welding Institute are looking to domesticate over 90 per cent of skills.
Speaking during a graduation ceremony for the first set of Airforce officials trained under the MOA, Sadique Abubakar, Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal said the Airforce has signed partnership with about 100 local firms as part of measures to design local solutions that would help reduce unnecessary spending of taxpayers money on foreign trips and conserve foreign exchange in the country.
According to him, the Partnership with Mudiame would enable NAF to calibrate its equipment, conduct NDT and weld, thereby kick-starting the force centre located in Kaduna with limited or no assistance external bodies.
Represented by Cosmas Ozougwu, NAF’s Director in charge of Aircraft Quality Assurance, Abubakar stated that the force has been taking most of its equipment out of the country for repairs and maintenance since the military arm is involved with a lot of aviation equipment, which require precision but decided to look in-ward to build local capacity.
“Our equipment needs a lot of maintenance. Before now, most of the measuring equipment has been taking abroad for calibration and maintenance at a very exorbitant cost but the Chief of Air Staff said as long as we keep using foreigners to maintain our platforms, we not make any head way. These people are not always there when you need them and we cannot call yourself a nation if we depend solely on foreigners to maintain our platforms.
“The choice of Mudiame is the step for us because we didn’t have this level of equipment anywhere else. This development will help save taxpayers’ money,” he said.
Being an ISO 17025 accredited Nigerian based testing, calibration and inspection company offering services basically to the oil, gas and ailed Industries, Managing Director of the group, Sunny Eromosele, who disclosed that the group is strategically looking forward to addressing the challenges of skills in the Air and Naval in the country stated that the firm has open up relationship with other African countries to address similar challenges.
Eromosele, who disclosed that the group is already at the verge of completing a university with the aim of meeting industrialisation demands in the country, added that the company would donate equipment to the Airforce kick-start its calibration and testing centre.
“This development has a lot of benefits to the country. Apart from the fact that we will conserve a lot of foreign exchange, we are supporting the Nigerian content act, empowering our own people, saving time that is needed to transport equipment abroad and it re-enforces the confidence that these things are doable in the country.
“We started with the oil and gas industry by supporting infrastructure development in the country because in the past most of the certification and training were done outside Nigeria and we find it difficult to find qualified Nigerians to participate in these projects. We lost a lot as country through. Now we are making another progress with the Airforce.
“We are aiming at the manufacturing of some of these equipment in country. We cannot perpetually depend on other. We already signed partnership with leading organisations across the world, we have global standard Welding Institute and we are at the verge of completing Mudiame University. With these will contribute to greatly to other industries, especially the manufacturing and allied industries,” Eromosele said.
Solomon Edebiri, President of the Nigeria Institute of Welding, who lauded the initiative, stated the country is current working on a national qualification system to integrate all skills thereby domesticating over 95 per cent skills in-country.
He said: “We pay for international certification. Every certificate we issue under the foreign system, we pay for it and everybody that comes here to work from abroad we pay them in dollar. This capital flight is no longer acceptable.”
IFEOMA OKEKE
