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The Deputy President of the Nigerian Senate, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege has said for the nation to be able to achieve the oil production benchmark as stipulated in the 2021 budget, certain things must be put in place.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports Senator Omo-Agege stated this on Wednesday as the Senate began debate on the 2021 budget estimate of N13.08 trillion recently presented to a joint session of the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari.
“This 2021 budget proposal is based on two predicates. The first is the 40-dollar benchmark and the second is the oil production estimate of 1.86 million barrels per day.
“Like I indicated in the debate for the 2020 budget, for us to be able to achieve this 1.86 million barrels per day, certain things must be in place.
“We must have peace and indeed, maintain the peace in the Niger Delta region.
“For those of us that represent the region, we are very worried for these are the people that represent the goose that lays the golden eggs that take care of the economy. But, majority of them are jobless; there is nothing for them.
“That is why we maintain that the youths in these communities must be engaged and the only way they can be engaged is for these oil companies who explore oil in these communities to help in creating jobs for these people and the only way they can do this is to have their business operating headquarters located in the Niger Delta,” Omo-Agege stated.
Also, the Delta Central Senator lamented the current state of the Benin-Sapele-Warri road, stressing the road is nothing to write home about.
“The infrastructures that we have in that region are dilapidated. The roads are bad. A journey of 45 minutes now takes six hours.
“As we get closer to another Christmas period with an expected influx of people and vehicular movements, something should be done right away to fix all the bad roads in the Niger Delta.
“It is bad enough that the country is in bad shape right now but we need to try and put the infrastructures we already have in order,” the Senator said.
He further stressed on the need to focus on solid minerals as means of revenue generation for the nation. He stressed solid minerals belong to the nation at large.
“Secondly, we should also focus on our solid minerals. We have gold in some Northern States. I have seen the Governor of Zamfara selling gold worth N5 billion to the Central Bank of Nigeria. The golds do not belong to the state but the nation at large,” the Senator argued.