NIGERIA AND NAMIBIA: NOW AND IN THE FUTURE

Keynote Speaker: Her Excellency Esther Adebola Arewa
High Commissioner of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to the Republic of Namibia
5th International African Energy, Oil and Gas Summit (IAEOGS)
Hilton Garden Inn, Windhoek · Scheduled to be held on Wednesday, 4 November 2026 · 09:45–10:15
Theme: “Igniting Africa’s Energy and Land Governance Futures”

PROTOCOL
Professor Frednard Gideon, Vice-Chancellor of the Namibia University of Science and Technology,
The leadership of International Africa Energy Oil & Gas Summits Limited and all partners of this summit,
Your Excellencies, Members of the Diplomatic Corps,
Leaders of industry, investors and development partners,
Distinguished academics and students of NUST,
Members of the press,
Ladies and gentlemen.
Good morning.

OPENING
Let me begin with thanks. To the Vice-Chancellor and the NUST family, and to the organisers and partners of this summit: thank you for the invitation, and for the honour of speaking on a subject that is close to my heart.
Let me also begin with sympathy. In recent weeks, Namibia has mourned Madame Penehupifo Pohamba. She was a nurse and a midwife long before she was First Lady, and in the camps of the liberation struggle she helped bring Namibian children into the world. On behalf of the Government and people of Nigeria, I extend our heartfelt condolences to Her Excellency, President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, His Excellency Dr Hifikepunye Pohamba, to the family, and to the people of Namibia. May her soul rest in peace.
Let me tell you why. Fifty years ago this year, in January 1976, General Murtala Muhammed stood before an emergency summit of the Organisation of African Unity on Angola and told the world that Africa had come of age, and would no longer take orders from outside powers. Today, our High Commission in Windhoek stands on a street this city named after him: General Murtala Muhammed Avenue. The first time I read that street sign, I understood something no briefing paper in Abuja could fully teach me. The friendship between our two countries is not only written in treaties. It is written into the map of this city.
I have been asked to speak on Namibia and Nigeria, now and in the future. I will say briefly where this friendship came from, because the future always borrows from the past. I will be honest about where we stand today. And because this is an energy summit, I will spend most of my time on what Nigeria has learned, very often the hard way: in seventy years as an oil and gas producer, and in our more recent push into refining, minerals and the protection of the infrastructure that makes all of it possible. Then I will propose what our two countries should build together.
WHERE THE FRIENDSHIP BEGAN
Nigeria’s relationship with Namibia did not begin in 1990. It began long before there was a Namibian flag to raise.
Between 1976 and 1994, five Nigerian diplomats chaired the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid. Nigeria stood with the Frontline States so consistently that the grouping came to be known, in the language of the time, as “the Frontline States and Nigeria.” President Nandi-Ndaitwah used those very words herself when she recalled the road to the 21st of March 1990.
The support was not only diplomatic. In 1976, Nigeria set up the Southern Africa Relief Fund for the victims of apartheid. Civil servants gave part of their monthly salaries to it, and students skipped meals to contribute. Nigeria also opened its schools and universities to young Namibians, and I suspect some of the professionals in this room, or their parents, studied in Nigeria.
When Founding President Sam Nujoma passed on last year at the age of ninety-five, Vice President Kashim Shettima stood at Heroes’ Acre to deliver President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s tribute to a warrior and a nation-builder. Dr Nujoma never believed the struggle ended in 1990. In 2012, at a memorial for Kwame Nkrumah, he warned that political freedom would remain “insufficient and meaningless” without genuine economic independence.
Permit me to say, thirty-six years after Namibia’s independence, they are the right place to begin, because the economic part of that struggle is exactly what this summit is about.
WHERE WE STAND TODAY
Diplomatic relations followed soon after independence, and on the 3rd of February 1992 our two countries signed the framework agreement on which our cooperation rests. Through the Technical Aid Corps, Nigerian teachers, specialists and other professionals came here in the 1990s to serve, many of them in rural areas.
But a friendship lives on what it does, not only on what it remembers. And I would not be doing my job if I told you that everything is as it should be.
Between 2010 and February 2025, our Joint Permanent Commission did not meet. Fourteen years. When it finally sat again here in Windhoek, trade was at the top of the agenda, and for good reason. In 2023, Namibia sold Nigeria about eleven million US dollars’ worth of goods, most of it salt. Nigeria sold Namibia less than two million dollars’ worth. Two countries with nearly a quarter of a billion people between them did about thirteen million dollars of business in a whole year. That is not yet a trading relationship. It is a courtesy.
The human traffic is thin as well. A few thousand Nigerians live and work in Namibia, and only a handful of Namibians live in Nigeria. Air Namibia once flew directly between Windhoek and Lagos, from 2018 until the airline closed in 2021. Since then, there has been no direct flight between our countries.
So when I said, on the day I presented my credentials, that my immediate focus would be to strengthen this old relationship and revive our technical assistance programmes, I meant it as a practical matter. The goodwill is already here. What we lack is movement: of goods, people, students, capital and ideas, in both directions.
WHAT SEVENTY YEARS OF OIL HAVE TAUGHT NIGERIA
Now to the heart of this summit.
In January this year, Nigeria marked seventy years since the first commercial discovery of oil at Oloibiri. In one sense, Namibia today stands where we stood then. You have made world-class finds in the Orange Basin, and some of the largest energy companies in the world are here. The decisions taken in the next few years will shape this country for half a century.
I want to be careful. I will not comment on negotiations between the Government of Namibia and its partners. Those belong to Namibia, and Namibia will decide them well. What I can offer, as a friend, is Nigeria’s own experience. Some of it we are proud of. Some of it we would do very differently if we could start again. I think the second kind is the more useful to you, so I will not hide it.
The first lesson is about gas. For decades, Nigeria produced oil and burned most of the gas that came up with it, because we had not planned any use for it. Our communities lived beside those flames, day and night. It took us decades, the building of Nigeria LNG and the slow growth of a domestic gas market to turn that waste into wealth. Today flaring is down to about seven per cent of our gas output, and in the first half of this year we put nearly 93 per cent of the gas we produced to use. Our gas reserves stand at about 215 trillion cubic feet, the largest in Africa. I mention all this because associated gas is one of the hardest questions in the Orange Basin today. Nigeria has engineers, regulators and companies who have spent entire careers on exactly that question. Their knowledge is available to Namibia.
The second lesson is about the law. Nigeria debated a comprehensive petroleum law for more than a decade before the Petroleum Industry Act was signed in August 2021. Investors waited. Some of them left. Certainty, even imperfect certainty, is worth a great deal. A framework that is clear and stable will attract more patient capital than one that is generous on paper but uncertain in practice.
The third lesson is about local content, and this one is a success story. Before our local content law of 2010, far too much of the money spent in our industry left the country on the next flight out. In 2016, Nigerian content stood at about 26 per cent. This year, our Content Development and Monitoring Board reports about 61 per cent, and we are working towards 70. That did not happen through slogans. It took a dedicated regulator, a fund, industrial parks, training, and the patience to grow local firms until they could compete. Ghana’s national oil company came to study our model this year. Namibia’s Cabinet approving the National Upstream Petroleum Local Content Policy on the 4th of August is a welcome development, and our Board would be happy to share both what worked and what did not.
The fourth lesson goes to the theme of this summit, which is land. Oil is always found under somebody’s land, or off somebody’s coast. Go to Oloibiri today and you will find a rusted derrick, and a community that feels it gave the nation a great deal and received too little back. Across the Niger Delta, for far too long, the people who lived on top of the wealth saw the least of it. What they saw were the spills, the dead fish and the spoiled farmland. The anger that grew out of that cost Nigeria lives, lost production and years of peace. Only with the Petroleum Industry Act did we write into law that companies must put three per cent of their annual operating costs into host community development trusts, with the communities themselves at the table. We should have done it fifty years earlier.
So if I may say one thing to the policymakers in this room: decide now, before the first barrel, how the people of ǁKaras and the coastal towns will share in this, and write it down. Decide who owns what, who is consulted and who is compensated, on land and at sea. It is far cheaper to build trust before production than to buy back peace afterwards.
PROTECTING WHAT WE BUILD
That brings me to a subject Nigerians know painfully well: the security of critical national assets and infrastructure.
An oilfield is only as valuable as the pipeline, the terminal and the sea lane that carry its product. In 2022, theft and vandalism on our pipelines helped drag Nigeria’s oil output down to about 1.1 million barrels a day. We were producing oil and losing it before it could be sold. The recovery came when we treated pipelines, power lines, rail tracks and telecom masts as what they are: critical national assets whose protection is a matter of national security. The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps leads that effort, working with the armed forces, the police, private surveillance contractors and, most importantly, the communities who live along the pipelines. By the middle of this year, our combined crude and condensate output was back above 1.7 million barrels a day.
At sea, the lesson is similar. Not long ago, the Gulf of Guinea was among the most dangerous waters in the world for seafarers. In 2021, Nigeria launched the Deep Blue Project, an integrated maritime security programme with special mission aircraft, helicopters and vessels. Our Government now reports four years without a single piracy incident in Nigerian territorial waters.
Namibia’s offshore fields lie in deep Atlantic waters, with Lüderitz and Walvis Bay as their gateways. My humble advice is to plan their protection now, on land, at sea and in cyberspace, and to make the communities partners from the first day. Nigeria’s security agencies would welcome the chance to share what they have learned, including the mistakes.
REFINING AT HOME
Let me turn to refining, because here Nigeria has a confession to make. For most of our seventy years as an oil producer, we exported crude and imported petrol. It was one of the great contradictions of our economy.
That is changing. The Dangote refinery at Lekki, built for 650,000 barrels a day, reached full capacity in February and has begun exporting petrol to other African countries. When supplies from the Middle East were disrupted earlier this year, several of our neighbours turned to it. Alongside it, smaller modular refineries have come up in the Niger Delta, and I am pleased that the Crude Oil Refinery-owners Association of Nigeria is a partner of this summit.
I will be honest with you about the modular story too. Nigeria has licensed about thirty modular refineries. Only five have been completed, and in the first half of this year only three were running. Our experience is that the model works only when three things come together: reliable crude supply, patient finance and the technical capacity to run the plant. We took the crude problem seriously enough to write it into law. The Petroleum Industry Act now places a domestic crude supply obligation on producers, so that our refineries are not starved of feedstock.
Why does this matter to Namibia? Because Namibia today imports all of its fuel, about 1.1 billion litres a year. Let’s do the maths, that is about 19,000 barrels a day, and several of the modular refineries licensed in Nigeria are designed for 20,000 barrels a day or more. Whether Namibia should refine its own oil one day is a decision for Namibians, and I will not presume to make it for you. But if you study that question, the modular model, and Nigeria’s experience of what makes it succeed or fail, deserves a place on the table.
[Optional cut] And Nigerian capital is already here. Dangote Industries Namibia has begun the environmental approval process for a 1.6 million-barrel fuel storage terminal at Walvis Bay, planned as the starting point of a pipeline to Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia. If it comes to pass, Walvis Bay becomes a fuel gateway for the region. That is exactly the kind of investment that should flow in both directions.
BEYOND OIL: MINERALS AND A NEW REVENUE BASE
There is a second revolution under way in Nigeria, and it has nothing to do with oil.
For decades, our solid minerals sat in the ground or left the country raw, often in the hands of illegal miners, while the nation earned very little. In 2023, the solid minerals sector brought the Government about 16 billion naira. In 2025, it brought in close to 70 billion. That is still small next to oil, but it is growing fast, and it is becoming a revenue base that does not rise and fall with the price of crude.
That did not happen by accident. The Government revoked more than 2,500 dormant and defaulting licences. It has tied mining licences to local value addition, so that raw minerals do not simply leave the country unprocessed. It created the Mining Marshals, a dedicated force drawn from the Civil Defence Corps, to take back mining sites from illegal operators. And in July this year, a lithium processing plant able to handle 6,000 tonnes of ore a day opened in Nasarawa State, the largest in West Africa.
Namibia reached the same conclusion. In June 2023, your Cabinet banned the export of unprocessed lithium ore and other critical minerals. Our two countries are on the same side of the most important argument in African mining today: that Africa should sell finished value, not holes in the ground. Nigeria’s push for value addition helped bring about the Africa Minerals Strategy Group, which elected our Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr Dele Alake, as its first chairman. Namibia’s voice in that conversation would carry real weight. And there is practical work to share: geological data, beneficiation, the policing of illegal mining, and the hard business of making sure that mining communities, like oil communities, see the benefit.
WHAT WE SHOULD BUILD TOGETHER
So what should the future look like? I would rather give you a short list of things we can actually do than a long list of wishes. Let me offer six.
First, people before projects. I intend to work with the Government of Namibia to revive the Technical Aid Corps, aimed this time at the skills a new oil, gas and minerals economy needs: petroleum engineers, geoscientists, metallurgists, safety and environmental specialists, and the lawyers and accountants who negotiate and audit contracts. I would also like to see Namibian students at Nigeria’s Petroleum Training Institute in Effurun and the Federal University of Petroleum Resources, and Nigerian academics here at NUST. Vice-Chancellor, NUST’s campus in Lüderitz sits in the town that has become a base for this new industry. I would welcome a conversation with you about how Nigerian institutions can join that work.
Second, regulator to regulator. Namibia’s petroleum administration is young. Nigeria’s is old, and has made most of the mistakes there are to make. Practical exchanges between our upstream, local content and mining regulators, between NAMCOR and NNPC, and between our security agencies on the protection of critical infrastructure, could save Namibia years and a great deal of money. This does not need a summit. It needs a memorandum and a budget line.
Third, make our agreements work. Our record here is not good enough. A tourism agreement that our two countries decided on in 2008 was not signed until 2014, and earlier agreements expired without ever being implemented. I will press for every agreement we hold to be used, not filed. A signature means nothing until a ship is loaded.
Fourth, connect our skies. Nigeria and Namibia already have a bilateral air services agreement. What we do not have is a plane. Namibia is preparing to launch its new national airline, and Nigerian carriers have already held talks about a Lagos to Windhoek route. I would like to see our aviation authorities update that agreement, our airlines find a route that pays, and our immigration services make visas simpler in both directions. Every direct flight is a trade mission that leaves twice a week.
Fifth, African money for African energy. Namibia and Nigeria are both members of the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization, which, together with Afreximbank, is setting up the Africa Energy Bank, with its headquarters in Abuja. At a time when many international lenders are stepping back from oil and gas, that bank is being built for exactly the kind of frontier producer Namibia is becoming. I would like to see Namibian projects and Namibian firms on its books.
Sixth, trade that runs both ways. Nigeria does not only want to sell to Namibia. We want to buy. Namibian beef, fish, salt, grapes and dates have a market of more than two hundred million people waiting for them, and the African Continental Free Trade Area gives us the rules to reach it. I would like to see a joint trade and investment mission between our two countries in the coming year, with energy, mining and agriculture at its centre.
[Optional cut] And one more thing, because no conversation about the future of energy is complete without it. Oil and gas will not be the last chapter. Namibia’s sun, wind and green hydrogen ambitions, and Nigeria’s own push to bring electricity to the millions of homes that still lack it, point in the same direction. We should be partners in that transition too, rather than two African countries importing the same solutions separately.
CLOSING
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, let me return to where I began, to Dr Nujoma’s warning that political freedom is not enough without economic independence.
The generation that fought for Namibia’s freedom did not have the luxury of choosing its friends at leisure. They took help wherever it honestly came from, and Nigeria was proud to give it. Our generation has a different task, and in some ways a harder one. Political friendship can be built on a common cause. Economic partnership has to be built on common interests, signed contracts, delivered goods, protected infrastructure and trained people. It is slower work, and much less glamorous. Nobody names a street after a trade agreement.
But that is the work in front of us. Nigeria stood with Namibia when the question was whether Namibians would be free. We want to stand with Namibia now that the question is what Namibians will do with what lies beneath their land and their sea.
I thank the Namibia University of Science and Technology and the organisers for this platform. Thank you. God bless the Republic of Namibia, and God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.