The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) has commended the House of Representatives for the passage of Petroleum Industry and Governance Bill, PIGB.
While commending the leadership of the green chamber, CISLAC noted that the bill will promote transparency in the oil sector.
The position of the NGO was made known in a press statement signed by its Executive Director, Auwal Ibrahim Musa on Thursday.
The statement reads, “While we welcome and applaud the passage, we find such development worthy of commendation as it will to appreciable extent promote transparency, accountability and governance, as well as curtail monumental financial losses in our nation’s oil and gas sector.
“We are not unaware that the passage, which aimed primarily at the restructuring and reformation of the nation’s oil and gas sector has set the pace unbundling of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to establishing independence agency for effective operationalization and regulation of the sector and merger of its subsidiaries into an entity for appropriate supervision and coordination.
“We recall that both the House and the Senate passed the PIGB for a second reading in June 2017 after which the leadership of the House set up the ad hoc committee headed by Chief Whip of the House, Hon. Al-hassan Ado Doguwa, to conduct Public Hearing for stakeholders’ inputs to fine tune the bill.
“We are pleased that the passage is in line with overarching recommendations made by CISLAC during an engagement with the House’s Ad hoc Committee on PIGB in October 2017 with subsequent commitments by the Committee to get it passed—along with other outstanding PIG Bills, before the end of their tenure. We believe this passage comes in fulfilment of the commitments.
CISLAC urged the lawmakers to expeditiously pass other relate bills.
“Considering other outstanding Bills that are paramount to the existence and composition of PIGB such as those related to the host communities and fiscal issues in the sector that have passed through second reading in the House, we call for sustain efforts and commitments to fast-track their passage.
“We call on both Chambers of the National Assembly to hold a Joint Session to accelerate the harmonisation process of the two versions passed for timely Presidential assent.”
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