Glasgow: Mr Lolade Olamide, a gas engineer, has urged Nigeria to leverage its natural gas resources to drive industrialisation, create jobs, and promote community development. Olamide, who has extensive experience in the gas, Natural Gas Liquids (NGL), and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industries, made the call while presenting a paper at the Nigerian Society of Engineers conference in Glasgow, Scotland.
According to News Agency of Nigeria, Olamide emphasized that Nigeria’s challenge lies not in resource scarcity but in weak governance and limited capacity to convert resource wealth into broad-based development. As a Principal Engineer at a major U.S. LNG facility, he highlighted that Nigeria possesses more than 200 trillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves, yet its LNG capacity remains at about 22 million tonnes annually. This disparity, he noted, underscores the need to strengthen governance, infrastructure, and industrial linkages around gas development.
Olamide stressed the importance of avoiding the crude oil experience, where substantial revenue generation did not translate into industrial opportunities for many producing communities. He asserted that “resource wealth creates opportunity; governance determines outcomes,” advocating for LNG projects to serve as anchors for industrial clusters rather than stand-alone export facilities.
He proposed the development of clusters that integrate power generation, petrochemicals, fertiliser production, manufacturing, fabrication, shipbuilding, marine services, logistics, data centres, research, and technical training. Citing successful examples like Qatar’s Ras Laffan, Singapore’s Jurong Island, South Korea’s Ulsan, and Aberdeen in Scotland, Olamide envisioned an industrial corridor in Nigeria stretching from Calabar and Akwa Ibom through Port Harcourt and Warri to the Lagos-Ogun industrial belt.
He identified seven governance priorities, including transparency, industrial clusters, technology specialisation, institutional continuity, and environmental accountability. Additionally, he emphasized workforce development, community benefit-sharing, and land partnerships, along with domestic value retention.
Olamide highlighted the need for policy continuity, pointing out that LNG plants, ports, railways, industrial parks, and technical institutions require more than four-year political cycles to mature. He cited Ajaokuta Steel, steel rolling mills, and Nigerian Machine Tools as examples of investments that failed without policy continuity and strong value-chain linkages.
Advocating a minimum 10-year governance framework for LNG-led industrial development, Olamide called for host communities to move beyond compensation and corporate social responsibility to active participation in economic value generation. He proposed transparent compensation, livelihood restoration, technical training, community development trusts, and structured land partnerships.
Under his Vision 2040, Nigeria would target 80 million tonnes of annual LNG capacity, three to four industrial clusters, additional seaports, regional rail connectivity, and major petrochemical and fertiliser hubs. The vision also includes shipbuilding, marine services, and the development of a strong technical workforce to support industrial growth.
Olamide urged policymakers to make governance, industrial linkages, and community participation central to the country’s next phase of gas development, questioning whether LNG would become another export enclave or serve as a platform for power generation, manufacturing, research, skills development, and regional trade.