Mariam Abeeb
The Nigerian oil and gas sector has lifted in-country participation from below 5% before the 2010 NOGICD Act to over 61% today, a shift the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) links to more than US$20 billion in in-country investment.
As Nigeria positions itself for a fresh wave of upstream activity, the question is no longer whether local content works, but how to sustain its momentum.
That is the focus of the Nigerian Content Seminar, which opens the 25th edition of NOG Energy Week on Monday 6 July 2026, under the theme “Shaping the Next Phase of Local Content Growth.”
The figures mark both an achievement and a turning point, a shift that the seminar is convened to examine. The early phase of the Nigerian content journey was built on redirecting industry spend toward Nigerian firms and growing their share of contracts.
The next phase demands more: deepening the engineering, manufacturing and operational expertise that indigenous companies need to build, run and maintain the increasingly complex assets now entering the project pipeline, without leaning on imported technology and talent.
Nowhere is that test sharper than offshore, where recent final investment decisions, from Shell’s US$2 billion HI Field to the US$5 billion Bonga North deepwater project, point to where the next investment cycle sits.
Indigenous firms have moved up the value chain in fabrication, marine services and project delivery; how fast that capacity scales to match the pipeline is a question the seminar will weigh.
Two pressures sit under the headline number, both flagged by the regulator itself.
The NCDMB’s review of expatriate quota applications, conducted with industry stakeholders, identified technical skill gaps still filled from abroad, prompting a drive to train over 10,000 Nigerians .
The Executive Secretary Felix Omatsola Ogbe said they “equip young Nigerians with practical, field-ready skills to ensure they can take part in the new wave of oil and gas projects and reduce overreliance on expatriate expertise”.
The Board’s Equipment Components Manufacturing Initiative targets the other: machinery still largely sourced abroad. Both will be argued out in Abuja.
The seminar is also expected to push the conversation beyond Nigeria’s borders. The country’s framework has become a reference point for other African producers, with Ghana and others adopting comparable rules; the recurring theme will be whether the continent can align its local content regimes rather than compete on them as it works to retain more value from its own resources.
“The local content debate in Nigeria has moved on,” said Wemimo Oyelana, Portfolio and Country Director, dmg Nigeria events. “It is no longer about hitting a percentage. It is about whether the country can turn those numbers into real industrial capability, and that is the conversation this seminar is built around.”
Twenty-five years in, NOG Energy Week has become the platform where Nigeria’s energy ambitions meet the capital and partnerships to deliver them, and the Nigerian Content Seminar opens it.
The numbers have already proven the model. Whether 61% becomes the foundation for genuine industrial capability, or a ceiling the sector settles for, is the question Abuja intends to put first.
As Nigeria’s foremost convening platform dedicated to serving the global energy industry, NOG Energy Week drives bold dialogue, strategic partnerships, and dealmaking to advance markets and accelerate progress. Engage with the entire energy value chain — oil, gas, power, renewables, technology, finance, and more — over five dynamic days dedicated to shaping a secure, just, and sustainable energy future for Africa and beyond.
NOG Energy Week will include 7,500 attendees , 300 global exhibitors, 85 participating countries , 2,000 delegates , 150 speakers , 50 conference sessions.
