PIB: Why Nigeria needs a single regulator, By Awaal Gata premiumtimesng.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from premiumtimesng.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
PIB: Why Nigeria needs a single regulator
Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB)
By Awaal Gata
It’s confusing that Nigeria’s response to every perceived challenge in a sector or industry is rushing to create a committee or duplicate an agency. This approach has been the guiding principle of our policymakers and it has hindered the growth of existing structures or public institutions designed to address a problem under revenue. It’s also ironic that Nigerians have been yearning for strong institutions and yet we are unable to establish that this retrogressive culture of creating and balkanising existing governing institutions, instead of strengthening them, is an instant setback. It is responsible for our inability to achieve target objectives.
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Finally, the much-awaited Petroleum Industry Bill was passed by the two chambers of the National Assembly, recently. Of the 319 clauses and eight schedules that make up the bill, the ones concerning the host communities and the frontier development of oil have sparked national conversation, threatening to stir up a storm should reservations arising therefrom are not addressed before President Muhammadu Buhari’s assent. For them, giving three per cent, rather than the 10 per cent demanded, to host communities, stretching the definition to oil infrastructure transit communities and using other people’s oil profit to grope for oil in unlikely or impossible places, bring to remembrance some of the on-going open grazing controversy in the country. Chris Paul reports
8 min read
After a 20-year journey, the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) on Thursday crossed a major landmark as the two chambers of the National Assembly considered the reports of their respective committees on the bill.
The beginning of the bill could be traced to the Oil and Gas Reforms Committee (OGRC) constituted by former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration. The report of the committee formed parts of the bill which was first introduced to the National Assembly by former President Umar Yar’Adua’s administration in 2008.
Mr Yar’Adua had constituted a committee on the implementation of the OGRC report. A subcommittee chaired by Yinka Omorogbe drafted the bill but that particular bill was marred by controversy. Segun Adeniyi, the spokesperson of the late president, detailed some of the controversies that bedevilled the bill in his book: Power, Politics and Death.