NEITI to Buhari: Let’s learn from Ghana by passing the PIB now

The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has urged president Muhammadu Buhari to expedite the process of passing the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).

NEITI made the call to the president in its new policy brief, titled ‘The Urgency of a New Petroleum Sector Law’.

“The process of enacting a new law for Nigeria’s petroleum sector has gone on for far too long, and at enormous costs to the country. More urgency and better coordination are needed on the passage of this very important bill”, said the brief while stating that “the PIB ship should be rescued from a start-stop, unhurried and uncoordinated mode and brought swiftly ashore”.

“PIB is one of the most important bills ever to be contemplated in Nigeria’s history, yet the one that has taken the most time and generated the most activity without legislation.”

According to NEITI, the delay in legislation on the bill is predominantly due to disagreements among stakeholders on the “regulatory frameworks, including power of the minister, ownership and control of the resources, host community benefits, environmental concerns, appropriate fiscal regime, etc and in the process, every administration has produced its own PIB draft(s), but not the law”.

Consequently, NEITI urged Buhari to invest his “presidential capital on this all-important legislation, putting in place a mechanism for rallying the stakeholders to a consensus, and using this law as one of the pillars of the bridge to a much needed economic recovery”.

The body recommended that “an inclusive task team should be urgently empanelled, with the President in the lead and charged with building consensus among stakeholders. This task team should draw up a clear and well-communicated roadmap and fast-track the passage of the law in piece-meal rather than an omnibus approach”.

NEITI noted that Nigeria has lost about $200billion over the failure to pass an enabling law for the petroleum industry.

“Some of these loses are projected investments due to regulatory uncertainty which experts have put at $120billion ($15 billion yearly).”

The policy brief noted that the current efforts at reviving the process of enacting the law are already “exhibiting disturbingly familiar patterns”.

NEITI further noted that it is a wrong choice to rely on rules and methods put in place four decades ago for a dynamic and volatile industry like the oil and gas sector.

Ghana’s passage of the law for its petroleum sector two years after commencing the process should be a lesson for Nigeria, NEITI added.