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PIB: N’Delta groups threaten showdown over Reps’ approval of 3% for host communities The Punch Published 17 July 2021 The Ijaw National Congress has said it will not be able to guarantee peace in the Niger Delta over the decision of the National Assembly to retain the three per cent proposed for host communities in the harmonised Petroleum Industry Bill. The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People also warned that the PIB had the capacity to generate conflict with host communities, urging the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd), not to sign the bill into...

Tolu Oyeniyi The Commander, Joint Task Force (JTF) Operation Delta Safe, Rear Admiral Aminu Hassan, recently admired the strategies deployed by the Interim Administrator, Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) Col. Milland Dixon Dikio (rtd) in the discharge of his duties. Without mincing words, he observed that Dikio’s administrative style has to a large extent promoted and sustained the peace in the Niger Delta. Hassan’s boss and Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Lucky Irabor, made a similar observation when he received Dikio and his entourage in his Abuja office. General Irabor specifically sa...

Finally, the much-awaited Petroleum Industry Bill was passed by the two chambers of the National Assembly, recently. Of the 319 clauses and eight schedules that make up the bill, the ones concerning the host communities and the frontier development of oil have sparked national conversation, threatening to stir up a storm should reservations arising therefrom are not addressed before President Muhammadu Buhari’s assent. For them, giving three per cent, rather than the 10 per cent demanded, to host communities, stretching the definition to oil infrastructure transit communities and using othe...

Views: 289 Mixed reactions Monday trailed the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) into law by the National Assembly. Afenifere, pan-Yoruba socio-political group, Ijaw National Congress (IJC) and Edwin Clark-led Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) faulted the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), describing it as a deception. Afenifere Secretary Chief Sola Ebiseeni said the Bill is a bubby trap set to keep the South in subjugation and slavery, urging stakeholders to reject its provisions. PANDEF described  the bill  as  “satanic, slavish and  a betrayal of the  lofty dreams of the people.�...

“FROM my observatory’’ is not a headline what I can claim to be original to me. I am taking liberties to borrow it from one of my mentors—the one and only Allah-De of blessed memory. He used the phrase not infrequently, if you see what I mean. Restructuring is a bye-word in our everyday political discourse. It features in conversations on the economy. Many are wont to say: How I wished we are free from the suffocating cage that is the unitary form of our government so the creative energies of Nigerians can be released for the good of all. Restructuring is a word buzzing in our ears. ...