Buhari shuns Niger Delta, signs controversial PIB into law

President Muhammadu Buhari has signed the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) 2021 into law despite objections to some controversial clauses in the bill by leaders from the Niger Delta region.

This was contained in a statement by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, on Monday.

Working from home owing to five- day quarantine as required by the Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19 after returning from London on Friday August 13, the President assented to the Bill Monday August 16 in his determination to fulfill his constitutional duty.

The ceremonial part of the new legislation will be done on Wednesday after the days of mandatory isolation would have been fulfilled.

The Petroleum Industry Act provides legal, governance, regulatory and fiscal framework for the Nigerian petroleum industry, the development of host communities, and related matters.

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The Senate had passed the Bill on July 15, 2021 while the House of Representatives did the same on July 16, ending a long wait since early 2000s and notching another high for the Buhari administration.

For 13 years, the PIB gathered dust in the National Assembly. It could not be passed into law under Obasanjo, YarAdua and Jonathan administrations. It could only see the light of the day six years after President Buhari ascended the ‘throne.’

However, criticisms have continued to trail its passage by the National Assembly. The Senate and the House of Representatives seem to have slight disagreement over a few clauses. That the two chambers battled over harmonisation hurdles meant that the bill was a hard nut to crack.

Critics from the Niger Delta, the goose that lays the golden egg, are not focusing attention on the merits of the bill. They fear that its demerits clearly outweigh its merits. As the geo-political zones are locked in distributive politics, South south believes that it should have an edge because oil is their gift of nature.

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Two knotty matters are worrisome to the stakeholders from the oil-bearing zone. The first is the quantum of the NNPC money allotted for real and imagined oil prospecting in some zones To them, the 30 percent is too much for the assignment, particularly in regions outside the Niger Delta. Their major fear is that the basins in the interior may exclusively refer to some places in the North. In their commentaries, they even doubted the presence of oil in those targeted basins.

The second bone of contention is the three percent allotted to the host communities. Rejecting it, Niger Delta leaders said the amount was grossly inadequate, and an affront on the marginalised and oppressed coastal communities.