Curious harmonisation of PIB by NASS – National Mirror

Senate President, Bukola Saraki, according to reports credited to him last week, said a different version of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) harmonised by the Senate and the House of Representatives was virtually ready for the consideration of both chambers of the National Assembly next week. Saraki was said to be declaring open a twoday NASS Business Environment Roundtable when he made the remark.The PIB was first presented to NASS in 2009. Since then, conflict of interest between the Federal Government and NASS, on the one hand; and on the other, Joint Venture (JV) partners, their local fronts, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and sundry other oil sector players’ ploy to ensure that transparency has no place in the nation’s oil sector has been stalling the passage of the bill. In 2012, the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan raised the alarm that a fake version of the PIB was in circulation.
The original version of the draft bill plans to increase taxes paid by oil firms, unbundle the NNPC into profitably-run companies; create an inspectorate unit as well as an independent regulatory agency. Indeed, the original draft PIB contains comprehensive regulatory, legal, fiscal and operational framework to guide oil sector investors, with the ultimate goal of making Nigeria a global investment destination as far as that sector is concerned. It equally made provisions for transparency in the declaration of oil exports and receipts, et cetera. Jonathan’s Presidency’s alarm on the existence of a fake PIB came at a time when Nigerians were full of hope that NASS would start work full blast on the bill. Some months after the alarm, however, the then Petroleum Resources Minister, Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke, confirmed to the London-based international news agency, Reuters, that a harmonised and authentic version of the PIB was sent to NASS for deliberation and passage to law in the third quarter of 2012. Today, four years after the ‘authentic’ version of the bill went to NASS, Saraki says: “The National Assembly – the Senate and the House of Representatives – are working very closely together.
As part of this commitment, we would all see next week when we lay down the Petroleum Industry Bill; you will see that the bill we are going to lay in each House is the same. We are going to lay the same version in the Senate and the House of Representatives because that is going to be the first time we are open to our words”. It is, however, obvious that the version NASS has ‘harmonised’ and is poised to work on would be remarkably different from the harmonised and authentic version Allison-Madueke said the Presidency sent to the lawmakers in 2012. The so-called harmonisation of the PIB, for the umpteenth time by NASS, has again fuelled speculations that vested oil-industry interests are bent on corruptly inducing the bureaucracy and legislature to kill the bill or water down its fiscal provisions to keep permitting poor accountability, transparency and probity in the nation’s oil sector, an age-long practice that has robbed Nigeria of huge revenues from oil export for over 50 years. Just last October, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, said the country was losing a whopping N3 trillion yearly (about $15 billion) from the uncertainties created by the nonpassage of the PIB by NASS, for example.
We do not have details of the nature of harmonisation Saraki said NASS did to the PIB. But the content of the original PIB is quite clear and generally available in the public domain. The Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Inter-Parliamentary Affairs, Rep Daniel Reyenieju, had in 2012, assured Nigerians that the PIB which Allison-Madueke said was sent to NASS that year would be thoroughly scrutinized “using all possible prisms of analysis and contextualized international best practices” before being passed to law. Reyenieju stated, in addition: “Nigeria being for now a mono-cultural economy which is almost solely rested on crude oil, it is through a good regulatory law that Nigeria can derive the necessary maximum advantage from this wasted asset”. The PIB being passed to law will set the stage for the proper deregulation of the oil industry to attract genuine and honest private investments; and free funds that will help the FG redress grave socioeconomic infrastructure deficits holding down the country. Any version of the bill considered by NASS that falls short of these expectations is retrogressive and should be rejected by Nigerians.