NAN-HE-13
Petroleum
By Kingsley Okoye
Abuja, Sept. 28, 2016(NAN)The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to take the lead and infuse urgency into the process of passing a new law for the nation’s petroleum industry.
NEITI’s Director of Communications, Dr Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, said in a statement in Abuja on Wednesday that the appeal wascontained in theagency’s latest policy brief.
The policy brief is titled: “The Urgency of a New Petroleum Sector Law.”
According to Orji, the process of enacting a new law for Nigeria’s petroleum sector has gone on for far too long and at enormous costs to the country.
“More urgency and better coordination are needed on the passage of this very important bill.
“The Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) ship should be rescued from a start-stop, unhurried and uncoordinated mode and brought swiftly ashore.”
According to Orji, the PIB is one of the most important bills to be contemplated in Nigeria’s history and has taken more time and generated the most activity without legislation.
He said that NEITI, as an agency, was set up to enthrone transparency and accountability in the extractive industries.
Orji said that the agency had legitimate interest in the enactment of a petroleum law for the country.
He explained that the setbacks suffered by the bill were not due to poor understanding of the problems but largely due to disagreements among stakeholders on the regulatory frameworks.
Other disagreements among stakeholders, according to him, include the place of the power of the Minister in the bill, ownership and control of the resources, host community benefits, environmental concerns.
The director of communications said every successive administration had produced its own PIB draft, adding that none of them had succeeded in enacting the law.
NEITI, therefore, recommended that an inclusive task team be urgently constituted with the President as the head to build a consensus among stakeholders.
He suggested that the task team should establish a clear and well-communicated roadmap to fast-track the passage of the law.
Orji said NEITI expressed dismay at the inability of successive governments to enact a law for a sector that accounted for over 80 and 90 per cent of its revenue and exports earnings respectively.
“NEITI, therefore, calls on President Muhammadu Buhari to make the passing of the PIB a priority by putting in place mechanism for rallying the stakeholders to a consensus.
“The president should use the law as one of the pillars to bridge the much needed economic recovery,’’he said. (NAN)
KC/MO/IA
Edited by Idris Abdulrahman