20 April 2016, Yenagoa — The Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), an environmental pressure group dedicated to the promotion of environmentally responsible activities on Tuesday described the renamed proposed Petroleum Industry Bill currently before the National Assembly as wishy-washy.
At a one-day ‘Environmental Parliament’ on the PIB in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, ERA/FoEN’s Executive Director, Dr. Godwin Uyi Ojo, explained that as major stakeholders in the legislative interactive process, the meeting was to aggregate the views of communities before the passage of the bill by the National Assembly.
Ojo argued that though ‘shady provisions’ such as the excessive powers granted to the petroleum minister to nominate board members, the acceptance of gifts by the minister and the president, and the award of oil blocks and contracts by the president had been removed, the bill did not meet the expectations of the oil-bearing communities.
According to the environmentalist, the document which has been renamed the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill delayed in the last National Assembly because the lawmakers succumbed to cheap blackmail by the oil companies which threatened to pull out of Nigeria.
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