By Musa Adamu
The Nigeria Extractive Transparency Initiative (NEITI) yesterday called on the National Assembly to intensify efforts towards the passage of Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) to permanently address the remediation issues in the oil and gas industry.
Chairman, NEITI, Ledum Mitee, who made the call at the roundtable meeting on the remediation issues in the oil and gas industry audit reports said, the delay in the passage of the PIB was the major obstacle to the desired reforms in the oil and gas sector.
“I therefore called on the National Assembly to expedite actions on the passage of the PIB as well as recommend the participants at the roundtable to work out a common approach towards refocusing attention on the need to pass the Bill.
“We may, for instance, consider the option of calling for the unbundling of the PIB into separate Bills to ensure measurable progress in the passage of the needed reform legislations in the industry.”
“For us at NEITI, we are convinced that implementation of this remediation plans is very critical to fixing the problems in our oil and gas sector. This is the reasons we are committed to the implementation of this remediation plan. We shall continue to work with all the relevant government agencies and other important stakeholders to ensure that the remediation plan is fully implemented,” he said.
He since Nigeria signed up to the global Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) NEITI has conducted and published four cycles of audit reports with profound revelations, identified government lapses and provided appropriate recommendations on how to fix the problems in the sector.
