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…Nigeria has nothing to effectively show for all the trillions earned for crude oil sales
…what you call an oil Bloc is someone’s ancestral land
…says he’s proud to be a police man
Former Governor of Bayelsa State, Senator Henry Seriake Dickson has said the recently passed Petroleum Industry Bill, otherwise known as PIB is a lose-lose situation for both Nigeria and investors.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports the former Governor while appearing on a monitored national television programme where he declared that the passed PIB as it is does not favour anybody.
TNG recalls that Dickson was one of the lawmakers alongside South South lawmakers who vehemently opposed the miserable 3 percent allocated to oil host communities during the consideration of the harmonised report by both Chambers last week.
He said this is the first time a civilian government is trying to do something about the issue but with what was passed, it’s a lose-lose situation for all.
Reacting on companies coming to invest in oil communities without the enabling laws, Dickson said:
“Are the communities begging you to come and drill their oil and pollute their land, their waters and their seas, they are not.
“You are the one whose survival and national economy is dependent on, the whole economy rest in the oil that is someone’s ancestral land.
“And for God’s sake, you must recognize that these are resources that belong to a people that the Federal Government through legislations under the military, all these legislations which I call expropriatory legislations were enacted by the military not in a democratic dispensation.
“This is the very first time you are trying to legislate on something that should go to them, back and forth agreement and so on, under democracy.
“But all the laws that have taken these resources from the owners, what you call an oil bloc is somebody’s ancestral property in the Niger Delta.
“So you have got to know that you are talking of the owners, what you, Nigeria takes is just an artificial, fictional owner because you are taking it from the people and vested it in yourself”.
On earnings so far on crude oil sales and preparation after oil goes extinct in Nigeria, the former police man noted:
“Is Nigeria aware, is Nigeria preparing for the day after oil? Do you know the trillions and trillions of dollars that has accrued to the Nigerian state from 1958 till now? Or forget about that, in the last one year trillions and trillions of dollars.
“Let me reverse the question to you, is there anything to show that the Nigerian government has been earning that?”
On his former job as a police man, he said: “I am a proud police man and I am still a police man, I even head a sub-committee on policing in the constitutional review committee and we are doing our best with the able leadership of the Deputy Senate President”.