Nigeria’s oil and gas industry is trying something it hasn’t done before: putting a deadline on its own promises.
The Oil and Gas Trainers Association of Nigeria closed a three-day conference in Warri, Delta State, on Friday by signing a manifesto that binds regulators, oil companies, training providers and universities to specific, time-stamped commitments meant to fix the sector’s widening human capital gap, a document organisers say is designed to outlast the usual round of speeches and handshakes.
“Rather than turning this conference into another regular talk shop, one of these jamborees where we just tick the boxes, we decided to make this different,” OGTAN President Chris Osarunmwense said at the closing plenary.
The shift from a conventional communiqué to a manifesto reflects frustration that has built for years across Nigeria’s energy sector, where conferences routinely produce recommendations that go nowhere.
Osarunmwense said the new document assigns each commitment a responsible party, a measurable output, a timeframe and a way to verify it was done — details he called central to the exercise.
