…says delay to send executive Bill can’t stop PIB
Hon Henry Ndochukwu Nwabuwa is a second timer in the House of Representatives, he is deputy chairman committee on Niger Delta Affairs, a versatile legislator, he represents Mbatoli/Ikeduru Federal Constituency of Imo State, in this chat with TheNewsguru(TNG) Regional Editor, Emman Ovuakporie, the vibrant Imo State born parliamentarian spoke extensively on the jinx surrounding the Non-Passage of the 20years old Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB unarguably the oldest Bill in Nigeria, excerpts.
Hear Him;
We are all aware that PIB has been with the national assembly since the year 2000 and there have been different efforts towards getting it passed into law, this is the 5th assembly that is taking a swipe at this task, do you think your committee can break this jinx?
But what I can say is that I got involved in it from the 8th assembly in my first tenure and in that 8th assembly the leadership constituted an ad hoc committee looking at this bill and the idea is just to set up a committee that is technical and charged with the sole responsibility of dotting the t’s and dotting the I’s and ensuring that the bill was passed.
Another major thing that was introduced in the 8th assembly was that the bill was broken down into four components parts, petroleum induy governance bill (PIGB) being the juicy foundation, fiscal, the administration and then the host community bill.
A lot of work was done in the 8th assembly passed by both chambers the House of Reps and the Senate and they sent it for presidential assent which was withheld and we had to reconvene as a technical committee to review the issues that were raised by the president.
We looked at it but unfortunately that was at the twilight of the 8th national assembly even though we had concluded the technical work, there wasn’t enough time to get it back to the floor of the house.
So the 9th assembly, what the leadership decided, having done so much work in the 8th assembly, virtually completed work, they decided to leave it to the domain of the standing committees of the relevant petroleum committees, so that would be the petroleum upstream, downstream, gas, environment, any committee that has some kind of oversight on the subject matter.
We are as of today expecting it to return back as executive bill but what we have done is that we are at a high alert as an assembly, very high level of preparedness. We have spoken up publicly both the Senate President and the Speaker committing this national assembly to passing this bill before the end of this year.
In fact we have been audacious enough to project its passage by the middle of the year but due to the fact that we are in March and the bill is not yet with the Senate to the best of my knowledge, it will be safe for me to project that it may go beyond the middle of this year but certainly before the end of the year, our intention is to get this Bill enacted into law.
But what is the importance of the bill; this is a bill that regulates the entire petroleum industry which is the source of our economy. Over 80% of our foreign revenue as of today comes from the oil and gas industry.
And as important as that industry is to us we are yet to put a governance structure, regulation and an act of parliament to instill the confidence in investors. We have seen in this country a loss in excess of 20billion dollars worth of investments that has flown away from Nigeria because we are not seen as a stable environment. As you know capital is always chasing the most favourable environment which is a very critical piece of legislation.
It will give us what we need in terms of everything that we need to ensure that we have an oil and gas industry that gives the kind of confidence to foreign investors so that we can start seeing the benefits by way of wrapping up our revenue and creating local values for all the players.