CIPS Oil & Gas Syndicated CAP Launch

23rd November 2015, Lagos, Nigeria

Good morning distinguished ladies and gentlemen.

It is a great pleasure to be here in Lagos, to meet with many professionals across various industries, attending this CAP launch event designed to deepen procurement professionalism by applying the tested methodologies, best practices, and tools taught by CIPS to deliver significant value for the procurement and supply chains in organizations.

Before I start, do permit me to express appreciation to the organizing team from CIPS and the local organizers for the preparation. Thank you for your passion and hard work.

To those who may not know me, I am Babs Omotowa, the MD and CEO of Nigeria LNG Limited, a company that contributes 4% of Nigeria’s GDP,  12% of the Government revenues, and supplies 7% of the global LNG market, and more than 70% Domestic Cooking gas in Nigeria.

Some of you may also know that I recently completed a 1-year tenure on October 30^th as the global president of our great association. This was a rare privilege, considering that I had neither been previously on the CIPS Board nor a principal officer of CIPS. My journey to the CIPS presidency was unexpected and I remain humbled and deeply grateful for the honour done to me and to Africa.

I qualified as MCIPS in 1996 whilst working for Shell in Warri, Nigeria, and subsequently participated in the Nigeria CIPS branch activities. I subsequently served as a CIPS examiner from 2002 and by 2006 I was honoured to be made a fellow.

However, I began my career in procurement, working in the warehouse at Warri. Come to think of it, at that time, being in the warehouse, my aspiration was to get to middle-level management where at least an additional benefit, such as a status car was a perk. Being a staff in what was considered a non-core area of the business, I could not have imagined at that time to see myself leading the entire organization.

My story shows there are no impossibilities even when you don’t see it. However, one thing I can tell you without any doubt is that the tools and techniques I learned from CIPS enabled and propelled me to reach the heights of CEO of this global company.

But then, I am not the only one who came to the boardroom via the procurement route – Tim Cook of Apple, and Sam Walsh of Rio Tinto are among the CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies with similar backgrounds. All these should, hopefully, motivate you to know that you can reach for the sky. I make no attempt to exaggerate but CIPS training and development will prepare you for the very top.

The profession and indeed the world have seen phenomenal changes, especially in the last 20 years with much technological advancement aided particularly by globalization, telecommunication, the internet, social media, and efficient logistics. In addition issues such as climate change, slavery/human trafficking, corruption/fraud, inequalities, etc are receiving more attention from global leaders and change agents. Of recent also, the recent plummeting oil prices with more than 50% drop from $110 to $53 has added to the economic downturn and significantly affected countries like Nigeria, Venezuela, etc. 

These issues and challenges are areas where procurement can make a difference and provides us opportunities to demonstrate the value we can bring. We have also recently seen advancements in robotics, 3D printing (airplane parts and recently human parts), uberisation, big data, etc which portends great opportunities for our profession.

This was the bedrock of my message to procurement professionals during my recently concluded CIPS presidency year which was: ‘raise your game, and raise your voice”.

To raise our game and our voice would require us as individuals and professionals to develop our skills and knowledge continuously and that is why we must be active in Continuous Professional Development (CPD). We must continue to learn new approaches, new techniques, new skill sets, and new ideas and keep abreast of modern trends and societal needs. We must keep driving for delivering greater value for our organizations and countries.

In my career, I cannot over-emphasize why personal development is very important for professionals. My first degree was in the sciences where the culture is one of black and white of either proving that something exists through repeated research or it does not. However, with a Master's degree in social sciences, I came to understand better that the world, in addition to black and white, also has shades of grey colors, where two different views of a market for example can both be right. 

My CIPS education was what enabled me to gain deeper insights into procurement best practices and the creation of value. I have had the privilege to work with various teams/groups in my career and progressively bring value e.g. at Shell in Nigeria. we introduced the first Nigerian-managed aviation partnership, investing significantly to ensure they could build the local capacity of modern helicopters worth over $100m. More recently as part of building 6 New Ships for NLNG, we brought creativity to enhance strategic contribution to Nigeria with the training of 600 Nigerians, historic export and use of about $10m worth of local materials of international standard, supply of simulators, and finally, the facilitation and enabling of a first LNG Drydock in SSA.

There are many more examples of ‘value-adding procurement coups’ all over the world and I do hope you can all aspire and see yourself in this realm, even in your area of influence.

Many of you here today are senior procurement professionals with procurement departments under your portfolio. You must therefore be thinking of how you do things differently and increase your contribution to your enterprise and be the leaders of your organizations tomorrow. Similar to my background, this CAP program provides you a platform to develop the capacity of your staff and function and deliver significant value to your enterprise. Developing your team into a winning one is critical for your success and your ability to coach, train, develop your staff are critical enablers to being a successful leader.

The future of our profession is indeed bright — but it is not guaranteed. Capitalizing on opportunities will not just happen by itself and members will have to learn and be willing to make significant changes in how they go about their business. The CAP program provides such an opportunity.

CIPS aims to help individuals and companies to professionalize their procurement and supply management because this is where the competitive edge lies.  So yes, I will encourage those of you who are yet to enroll for the CAP program, to do so, both for your personal benefit and that of their organization, I can tell you that NLNG will be enrolling in the program which though being kicked off now in Nigeria, will extend to other Africa countries.

Distinguished colleagues, ladies, and gentlemen, If we raise our game and raise our voices, I can say with certainty that our work will validate that we are a force for good. I do hope we can inspire the next generation of leaders in the profession to be the game changers in delivering value to organisations and societal economic growth in Africa.

I wish you all successful and meaningful learning in your career. Let us all go out there and make a difference.

Thank you for listening!

Babs Omotowa

Managing Director/CEO, Nigeria LNG Limited

Vice President of Bonny Gas Transport Limited