There is a particular kind of construction site that looks unimpressive to a passerby. No dramatic skyline yet. No ribbon-cutting crowd. Just graded earth, roads laid out with quiet precision, utilities stubbed in, and a sense that the most important work is happening below the surface.
Engineers recognize this stage as the point where a project becomes real. The visible structure will come later, yet the success has already been decided by the unseen choices: where power will enter, how water will drain, which bottlenecks have been removed in advance.
Simbi Wabote’s public service work in Nigeria often reads in that register. Appointed Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) in September 2016 after a long career at Shell that included senior roles in engineering and strategy, he brought a practitioner’s instinct for systems that have to function under pressure. During his tenure, NCDMB’s reported Nigerian content level rose from 26% in 2016 to 54% by the end of 2022 and 2023, framed within a 10-year strategic roadmap aimed at higher local participation by 2027.
The question is what that percentage means on the ground. Wabote’s answer, across initiatives and speeches, has been to build capacity in ways that serve two jobs at once: the function of making projects possible, and the symbolism of proving that the capability is local, durable, and worth investing in.
The functional build is about removing bottlenecks
Local content policy can become rhetorical if it stops at targets. The harder work is identifying what prevents a local company from taking on a contract, then changing the environment so that contract becomes feasible.
In a 2023 address at a Nigerian Content Seminar, Wabote described NCDMB’s support for local contractors and companies as aligned with the Board’s mandate, and he connected that mandate to specific interventions designed to strengthen capability. The list included financing vehicles such as the Nigerian Content Intervention Fund with the Bank of Industry and other matched and innovation funds.
Financing is not abstract in this setting. It is equipment deposits, factory tooling, working capital for mobilization, and the ability to bid competitively without relying on expensive short-term credit. If you want indigenous firms to take on higher-value work, you have to deal with the basic physics of cash flow.
Simbi Wabote also pointed to a second category of bottleneck: infrastructure for manufacturing. He described the Nigerian Oil and Gas Parks Scheme (NOGAPS) industrial parks as a “sites and services” approach designed to provide modern infrastructure that supports in-country manufacturing. In that same account, the parks were described as under development across multiple states, with specific sites in Cross River and Bayelsa reported as nearing operational readiness.
This is the engineer’s view of policy. Do not ask people to do work in an environment that makes the work unreasonably hard. Change the environment.
The symbolic build is about confidence, not decoration
A park scheme is practical, yet it is also a statement.
Nigeria’s oil and gas economy has long involved complex supply chains, high standards, and specialized services. “Local content” in that context is more than hiring. It is credibility. It is the ability of a Nigerian firm to look at a tender and feel, in its bones, that it can deliver.
A piece of infrastructure can help create that confidence because it makes capability visible. A fabrication shop floor within a dedicated industrial zone signals that manufacturing is expected, supported, and normal. A funding facility connected to a national mandate signals that scaling is not a private gamble alone.
NCDMB’s own descriptions of how Nigerian content performance is calculated reinforce this emphasis on verifiable progress. The Board describes a monitoring and evaluation process anchored in project spending, statutory reports, and compliance documentation that is reviewed and verified. That measurement orientation matters for symbolism, too. As explored in Wabote’s interview with Principal Post, it is easier to believe in a national ambition when the system shows its work.
Symbolism, in this sense, is not branding. It is the psychological effect of a system that behaves consistently enough to be trusted.
Building includes processes, not only structures
Wabote’s career before NCDMB helps explain why “building” for him extends beyond physical sites. His Shell background included roles in contracting and procurement, external affairs, and the development of local content strategy and frameworks across multiple countries. That is the world of processes: qualification systems, tender rules, supplier development, timelines that do not collapse when a single person is absent.
In the same 2023 NCDMB update, Wabote discussed an oil and gas e-marketplace rollout as an effort to organize opportunities and clarify how local firms engage with procurement pathways. A marketplace can be understood as infrastructure for information. It is a way of making demand legible so local suppliers can plan, invest, and compete with less guesswork.
This is another double-purpose build. Functionally, it reduces friction in contracting. Symbolically, it signals a more transparent, structured pathway for participation.
The deeper lesson: function and symbolism reinforce each other
It is tempting to treat symbolism as optional, something you add after the “real” work is complete. In development, that is often when projects fail to stick. People do not maintain what they do not believe in.
Wabote’s tenure is often narrated through outcomes like the local content rise to 54% and the roadmap toward higher levels. Yet the more durable story is the method: build the conditions that make local participation feasible, then build the confidence that makes participation self-sustaining.
A financing program that enables a contractor to purchase equipment is functional. It becomes symbolic when that contractor delivers successfully and the next firm believes it can, too. An industrial park is functional when it provides power and access. It becomes symbolic when it makes manufacturing feel like an expected part of the national economy.
That is how a percentage turns into a capability. Not by insisting. By building.
Learn more about Wabote on his website: