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
· Presidency: Jinx broken
Deji Elumoye, Adedayo Akinwale and Udora Orizu in Abuja
The two chambers of the National Assembly yesterday passed the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), after about 13 years of legislative fireworks.
Although the House of Representatives apparently skipped certain parliamentary procedures to pass the bill as witnessed by journalists at plenary, the Chairman of the House Ad-hoc Committee on the PIB, Hon. Mohammed Monguno, later told reporters that what transpired at the plenary did not actually mean that they passed it as widely reported.
The President of the Senate, Dr. Ahmad Lawan, said the demons behind the non-passage of the bill for many years had been defeated.
The Red Chamber approved the commercialisation of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the scrapping of the Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEF) and Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA).
It also okayed 30 per cent of profits accruing from oil and gas operations by the NNPC Limited for the exploration of oil in the frontier basins and set aside three per cent of the operating expenditure of oil companies for the development of host communities.
The Chairman of the Joint Committee, Sabo Muhammed Nakudu, said the bill’s passage and eventual assent into law would strengthen accountability and transparency of NNPC limited as a full-fledged company.
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