Hector Igbikiowubo
6 July 2009
(Page 2 of 2)
How do we get there?
We get there by making sure that we are doing the right thing. If more than 80% of the people you are supposed to be carrying along believe you are not doing the right thing, I don't think we need a rocket scientist to tell us we need to go back to the drawing board.
I recall you commenced work on a new project as soon as you retired from Forster Wheeler. Can you tell us what it is all about?
The new project basically is a resource and solutions management company, Deep Blue Energy Services, the company itself was set up based on the challenges that I encountered representing an international organisation within the sub-Saharan Africa market. Now, when I compared myself to a lot of my colleagues from other parts of the world, I discovered that the time spent on these man-made challenges so to say the least, was actually a significant aspect of the time that would have been put into attaining more businesses for the company. So it was more of what can one do to try and create a better understanding as to the global expectation for one to succeed within this region. In the light o f this reality, the first project I'm working on is a training programme with the theme: Bribery and Corruption: Avoiding the Pitfall. You may say why Bribery and Corruption: Avoiding the Pitfall? By the time you open any newspaper in Nigeria, there is always a page or an article that has to do with corruption or corrupt practices. It seems it's always in the air and it is never really defined and focussed in the sense that we need to define who a corrupt person is. Is it only the person that gets caught? What really is a collection of this corruption? Is it really an endemic problem like a lot of people say? During the course of personal reflection, I also looked at Transparency International rating of Nigeria and it was one of those things while I was with my previous employer where every time they talk about corruption, everybody just says, Oh! Anita, and it looked like Nigeria is synonymous with corruption and I kept on asking myself 'what is it we are doing wrong.?
I now decided to come up with this training programme to look at not so much as in instead of pointing the fingers at or continuing with the background undertone that 'Nigeria is corrupt and there is nothing you can do about it,' to see how I can set up a platform where the various stakeholders - both government and private - will listen to experts that have been involved in investigations of this phenomenon to say, "well, this is what the international organisations like OECD, European Union, EFCC, ICPC, these are what they deem as being corrupt practices. This is how we go about with the investigations of such practices and this is how you, as an individual can better protect yourself and your organisation so that you do not fall into this pit.
This is a very novel and laudable idea. How is it structured? Or did you just come up with a theme for this seminar off the cuff?
Like I said, Deep Blue Energy Services is a resource and solutions management company.
So under solutions management, what we look at is what are the challenges that companies face, both local and international - doing business in the region we operate and then take each one of those challenges and try and offer solutions as to how you can be better placed to do business in it. Most of the international companies working within Nigeria are either part of OECD owing to the European origin in which case they are required to do business under the guidelines of the OECD or the American companies in which case the FCPA is very important to them, or you have the European Union. Now, a lot of the Nigerian companies really don't know how they get caught up in this OECD or FCPA and all the other anti-bribery and corruption agencies globally. What we are doing for this particular under the circumstance is to say, "Well, let's help a bit with bringing in the experts. In this case, we are partnering with a firm called FPI. They are coming out of Washington, DC, USA.
What does FPI do?
FPI Consulting are sending us six facilitators and these facilitators are experts in the field. Some of them have been involved in high profile cases such as ENRON investigation so these are people that have worked for multinational companies and they have been involved in a lot of high profile cases.
Today, Nigeria is one of those countries they have heard of as being on the corruption radar. But they are coming to basically say 'this is how we do it; these are the cases we have had; this is how you protect yourself." It's a two-day programme. The first day is basically listening to them tell you what all the various anti-corruption laws say in terms of doing business. They will also tell you how these laws are operated and interpreted.
Who are the target audience?
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