THE House of Representatives Committee on Local Content said it is ready to collaborate with Dangote Refinery on the effective implementation of the Local Content Act in the country. FCILITY TOUR: From left: Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Local Content, Hon. Emmanuel Ekon; President/CE, Dangote Industries Limited, Aliko Dangote; and House of Representatives Local Content Committee member, Hon Zakariya’u Galadima during the facility tour by House of Representatives Local Content Committee members to Dangote Industries Limited, in Lagos. The Chairman of the Committee, Mr. Emmanuel Ekon, who stated this when members of his committee visited the $18 billion refinery complex in Lagos, said the lawmakers were ready to guide the company to be in compliance with local content law. He said, “We actually came here to see what is going on. We have come. We have seen and we need to work with the management of Dangote Group of companies to bring them up to speed. We understand that when a country engages in this kind of massive development, some rules have to be bent so that we can get to where we need to get to. We came here to see how we can guide Dangote Group of Companies so that they can be in compliance with the law.” Earlier, the Technical Consultant to Dangote Refinery, Mr. Babajide Shoyede, said the company has high regard for indigenous companies for proving their mettle when challenged technically. Explaining further, he said that out of four foreign companies and an indigenous company that bidded to move the refinery’s imported equipment, from Apapa wharf to the Dangote Free Trade Zone, only the indigenous company had the capability to do so. Shoyede stated that Wellman, the Warri – based company that did the task has shown that indigenous companies can compete favourably with their foreign counterparts. He commended the lawmakers for supporting indigenous companies to strive in Nigeria. ”As you are aware, we are currently building the world’s largest single line refinery, petrochemical complex and the world’s second largest Urea Fertiliser plant. “The refinery will have the capacity to refine 650,000 barrels of crude oil per day while the petrochemical plant will produce 780 KTPA Polypropylene, 500 KTPA of Polyethylene while the fertiliser project will produce 3.0 million metric tonnes per annum of Urea.” Responding to Shoyede’s remarks, Ekon said, “We don’t want the kind of mistakes that other companies have made in Nigeria to be repeated here.” That is why we need to start early to make sure that this company is up to speed so that five years down the road, they don’t run at loggerheads with the law. That is why we are here. “We need to talk to the management; we need to talk to Alhaji Aliko Dangote himself; we need to work with him and we need to encourage him. We are not here to antagonise anybody; we are not here to antagonise Dangote Group of Companies. We are not here to do things to slow down the speed of this massive construction that is going on, We are only here to start from the beginning to put them on the right track.”