ACCOMPLISH MAGAZINE AUGUST 2023

INTERVIEW
“
within your own company?
I must be honest with you. I’ve been in the
oil and gas industry for almost 32 years. I have
never paid a bribe, and I have never received a
bribe. I can honestly tell you that I would have
been a billionaire in dollars if I had taken any
of the opportunities that have been presented
to me in terms of bribery and corruption
daily. When you are exposed to bribery and
corruption opportunities, it’s up to you to take
or not take. Like I always tell people, I’m not a
billionaire today because I play by strict ethics
and integrity, and I’m very transparent.
Lonadek is very transparent in our business.
We always translate our audits and ISO
certification; ISO 9120 fifteen certifications
are something we are committed to. We are
also committed to integrity, honesty, integrity
and transparency. This is an area where we
made a decision that we are gonna be an
exemplary company even though it has cost us
a lot of opportunities, in terms of people who
play dirty in the oil and gas industry. I’m very
pleased to say that we have also benefited
from international opportunities because some
multi-national companies seek to do business
with us… whose footprint is integrity, honesty
and transparency.
One just has to decide whether you want to
play dirty or whether you want to play clean.
The oil and gas industry is known for bribery
and corruption, but we have not taken any of
those routes. We’ve lost opportunities based on
our position on ethics, but we are proud to say
that integrity has also created opportunities for
us. Many people we’ve trained, over the years,
now serve as executives in multi-nationals and
even international companies outside Nigeria.
I’ve visited places like Aberdeen, Houston,
and Qatar, where some of our trainees are
doing exceptionally well. So, if you are a person
of integrity, your work must speak for you at
some point. We work very hard and are diligent,
quality-conscious in all our deliverables. So, we
get jobs on merit and not based on privacy and
corruption.
Some activists argue that fossil fuel should
be completely phased out. What is your
perspective on this, and do you believe there
is a future for the oil industry in a sustainable
world?
Nigeria has yet to fully optimize its oil and
gas resources, regarding domestic use and
petroleum assets; with the Dangote refinery just
coming on stream or about to come on stream.
When you are
exposed to bribery
and corruption
opportunities, it’s up
to you to take or not
take. Like I always
tell people, I’m not
a billionaire today
because I play by
strict ethics and
integrity, and I’m very
transparent.
Hopefully, Nigeria has a huge opportunity for
industrialization using petroleum products.
So, I would say that there is not even a point
in optimizing our oil and gas resources for
industrialization until we domesticate our
manufacturing processes and we get to a
point where we have uninterrupted power
supply based on our petroleum assets.
Petroleum assets have not been fully
optimized because since oil and gas or
petroleum was discovered in 1956 in Oloibiri,
Nigeria is yet to fully use its speculum assets
for industrialization until we are able to go
for uninterrupted power supply. We need
to have a strategy where, over the next ten
years, we optimize gas to power and ensure
that domestic use of gas creates industries.
Nigeria will rise to industrialization phase, and
off the grid; we can use solar and renewable
energy… Be it geothermal, wind energy,
biomass or solar. We could use renewable
energy to augment the ungreased gas to
power solutions.
Still, the ultimate is to ensure that we
have the right energy mix from conventional
sources of energy and non-conventional
sources of energy to ensure that we
industrialize as a country. We will get
uninterrupted power supply and the quality of
life in Nigeria will improve and until Nigerian
citizens on the streets get the dividend of our
hydrocarbon footprints, we have not really
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Accomplish Magazine