Senate to lay PIB next week

The harmonised version of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) will be laid on the floor of the two chambers of the National Assembly next week, Senate president, Bukola Saraki has assured.

This is as a team of experts sponsored by the DFID has canvassed for the removal of controversial sections of the bill, which gives enormous powers to the petroleum minister.

The PIB, the longest serving bill in the National Assembly, was introduced in the sixth Assembly.

It was, however, plagued by different versions, as the proposed law was passed by the seventh House of Representatives but didn’t get the concurrence of the seventh Senate.

At the inaugural National Assembly Business Environment Roundtable in Abuja, Saraki assured that the new bill would be devoid of controversy.

Specifically, he said both chambers would pass the same version.

“The Senate and the House of Representatives are working very closely and as such some of these processes would not be brought down.

“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 the House is the same we are going to lay in the Senate because that is the first time we are open to our words,” Saraki said, in his keynote address.

In his presentation, leader of the team, Paul Idornigie, pointing out to Nigeria to attract investors and become business friendly, said there was an urgent need to amend or repeal some of the nation’s laws as well as introduce new ones, listing the PIB as one of such bills.

Nigeria is ranked 169 out of 189 economies in the 2016 World Bank Doing Business Report.

Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, is the world’s eighth-largest oil exporter, and almost 90 percent of its export earnings are tied to oil. 60 percent of the population lives in extreme poverty, youth unemployment is close to 80 percent, and on top of that the nation is bedevilled by insurgency, fuel scarcity, fall in revenue due to crash in crude oil prices in the international market, tumbling of the naira against the dollar, epileptic power shortages, among others.

According to Idornigie, there is need to collaborate with states to ensure that Nigeria improves in ranking in the World Bank Doing Business Report.

Speaking further, Idornigie said: “The powers given to the minister under the PIB are enormous. They created two regulators for upstream and downstream, with members comprising of representatives of Minister of Finance, his counterpart from Petroleum Resources, NUPENG, and PENGASSAN. These are those to be regulated, they are those who are members of the regulator.

“We need to look at this bill to see who are the regulators? How can NUPENG, PENGASSAN represent themselves?”

On his part, the chairman, Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), Kyari Bukar, revealed that 37 million micro and small medium enterprises exist in Nigeria, contributing 50 percent of GDP and account for 84 percent of all jobs.

Also, Simon Kenny, Head of Economic Growth, DFID Nigeria averred that the nation should use the present economic situation to set the stage for a post-oil era in which the private sector will steer the ship of the economy while government provides the enabling environment.

While calling for the replacement of ‘import substitution’ with ‘import competitiveness’ to help drive local industries, he said the low prices of oil offers a perfect opportunity for the country to diversify the economy and increase investment.

It is unclear if Saraki was referring to PIB as a private member bill or executive bill, as Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, had recently told a Joint Senate Committee on Petroleum (Upstream and Downstream) as well as Gas that the draft PIB was ready and would be presented to the National Assembly soon.