It will no longer be business as usual for oil and gas companies that fail to comply with the provisions of the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry Content Development (NOGICD) Act as offenders will henceforth be dragged before the law courts, The Sun reports.
The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) Executive Secretary, Simbi Kesiye Wabote, sounded the note of warning on Tuesday in Abuja, at the first national seminar for Justices and Judges on the “Role of the Judiciary in the Development of the Nigerian Local Content Law and Policy”, organised by the Juris Law Office and NCDMB in collaboration with the National Judicial Institute (NJI).
He noted that the NCDMB had used administrative procedures to enforce the Act in the past eight years but will begin to prosecute cases of infringement in line with Section 68 of the Nigerian Content Act. Wabote said the board had delayed the prosecution option because it wanted to fully exploit the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) methods, develop its operating guidelines and organise capacity building workshops on the Nigeria Content Act for the Judiciary.