By Etuka Sunday
The Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) is set to create zonal offices across the six geo-political zones of the country in order to enhance efficiency, bring the agency closer to the people and make its operations more cost effective.
A statement by the Head, Press and External Relations, PTDF, Kalu Otisi quoted the Executive Secretary of the agency, Mr Femi Ajayi to have disclosed this during an exclusive interview in his office recently.
Ajayi according to the statement said, as a national agency there is need for all the zones of the country to have a feel of PTDF being the sole agency of government with the mandate of developing capacity for the oil and gas industry across the country.
Mr Femi Ajayi described the creation of zonal offices as one of the projects he will vigorously pursue during his tenure as Executive Secretary, promising that by the beginning of next year(2015) one or two of the zones would have been created.
“my dream and what I am going to work towards is a PTDF that is more result oriented, PTDF that gives value for the money that is invested in the organization and a PTDF that is closer to the people, because at the moment we have only PTDF in Abuja, and for a big country like Nigeria, I think we need zonal offices, add to it is the idea of this agency being a national one and that is why I am so passionate about it and I believe it will serve the greatest good of the greatest number of people if we decentralize a bit”
He said that, in the immediate he will strive to see that the Fund establishes its presence at least in the Northern and Southern part of the country “if we cannot do the six geo political zones due to financial implications, we should be able to have it even if it is two zonal offices one in the Northern part and another in the Southern part of Nigeria especially in the oil producing areas because for an agency that caters for all Nigerians it needs to be closer to the people.”
Mr Ajayi described PTDF as an evolving agency whose mode of operations will continuously be subjected to a review process with a view to modernising them and make them more result oriented.
He said by decentralizing its operations, PTDF should be able to optimize on its performance and the delivery of its statutory mandate of capacity building for the oil and gas industry.
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