A civil society group, the Anti-Corruption and Research-Based Data Initiative (ARDI) has asked the National Assembly to repeal the 1996 Act establishing the Onne Oil and Gas Free Zone Authority, stating that agency was simply duplicating the functions of Nigerian Export Processing Zones Authority.
While the NEPZA was established in 1992 to administer and manage all the export processing zones in the country, OGFZA Act was enacted in 1996 for the oil zone at Onne/Okpokiri.
But the ARDI executive secretary, Chief Dennis Aghanya, said in a petition to the National Assembly that the establishment of OGFZA was a duplication of the functions being carried out by NEPZA.
In a copy of the petition our Correspondent received Sunday in Abuja, ARDI argued that OGFZA had contributed to the bloated personnel cost while doing exactly the same thing NEPZA was established to do.
The letter dated June 21, 2020, was addressed to the Senate President, Ahmed Lawan and copied to the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN) and the Secretary to Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha.
The anti-graft group said its petition was necessitated by the recent directive by the President, Major General, Muhammadu Buhari to implement recommendations of the Steve Oronsaye Presidential Committee on the need to downsize the number of government agencies in the country to reduce the cost of governance.
Aghanya said a former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Chief Ufott Ekaette, had on October 17, 2006, communicated to the recommendation of the Presidential Committee on Free Trade Zone to the then Minister of Commerce, Dr Aliyu Umar that there should be only one Free Zone Authority to be known as Nigeria Free Zones Authority which will be responsible for policy formulation for and general supervision of free zones.
According to him, the report of the Presidential Committee on the Restructuring and Rationalization of the Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies of April 2012 also recommended that the OGFZA should be reverted to the NEPZA by simply amending the Act establishing NEPZA.
The petition read, “We most humbly request the National Assembly, to as a matter of urgency and public interest, revert to the earlier status of the nation’s export processing zones by repealing the 1996 Act establishing the OGFZA and amending NEPZA Act 1992 to absorb the Onne Oil and Gas Free Zone Authority as a specialised department of NEPZA in Oil and Gas.”
