Senate, Reps deny stalemate, non-funding of PIB
JUNE 3, 2013
Spokesman for the Senate, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe
The Senate and the House of Representatives on Sunday denied they planned to stall the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill.
Despite passing the first and crucial second readings at the two chambers, there has not been much progress on the bill of late.
The PIB is to reform the oil and gas industry to generate the right returns on investments for the country.
After the second reading of the bill, the House conducted hearings in the six geopolitical zone in April.
However, investigations on Sunday showed that more than one month after the hearings, the ad-hoc committee on PIB had yet to collate the report.
Findings indicated that the committee had been starved of fund, a development said to be the “primary reason” delaying progress on the bill.
“The zonal public hearings did not come easy because the funds approved for the committee were not enough.
“There were a lot of challenges and right now the committee is trying hard to continue with the final lap of the hearing”, a source close to the committee told one of our correspondents in Abuja.
The House had planned to conduct a “grand finale” public hearing in Abuja after the zonal public hearing, but that has yet to take place.
Although, the Chairman of the ad-hoc committee, Mr. Ishaka Bawa, denied that funding was the problem, he admitted that the report of the zonal hearings was not ready.
He said, “We have no problem of funds; I just came back from Paris and intend to call a meeting to collate the report of the recently concluded zonal public hearings on PIB and thereafter take a date for the final public hearing.”
The House votes between N3.5bn and N4bn annually to fund committee activities.
The Senate too has yet to conduct any hearing on the bill, owing to alleged stalemate in negotiations between Senators from the North and their colleagues from the South.
Both sides are reportedly divided over the National Frontier Exploration Agency Bill, a bill with the same aim as the PIB, making it a tool for negotiation.
It was gathered that Northern senators were demanding the full support of their southern counterparts for the frontier bill in order to back the passage of the PIB.
But, Southern senators, it was learnt, had argued that to accede to that demand would amount to balkanising the PIB, which had already catered for the agency being sought.
The consensus had since suffered a setback, leading to a slow down of activities on the bill.
However, Senate Spokesman, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, told one of our correspondents that there was nothing to worry about on the PIB.
A text message he sent to our correspondent read, “There is no stalemate. We will do public hearing soon.
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