The Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021, which has been signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari has been described as a tool for witch-hunting host communities and making them pay for the irresponsible actions of oil and gas companies operating in their domains.  

Executive Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) International, a non-governmental organization, Nnimmo Bassey came out with this while reacting to the signing of the bill into law while controversy raged over certain provisions therein.

In a statement by HOMEF’s Media and Communications Officer, Kome Odhomor, the acclaimed environmental rights activist asserted that the signing of “the contentious bill into law sends a wrong signal to the oil extraction impacted peoples, communities and other Nigerians who expected a listening ear at Aso Rock”.

“HOMEF believes that the PIB will not halt the move by oil companies to shift offshore and leave their mess in already traumatized communities as oil companies are making these moves in order to escape accountability and because they will pay minuscule amounts as royalties in deep waters.”

Bassey stated that “HOMEF also believes that the Host Community funds as set up will have an overbearing influence of oil companies. The bill is very colonial system in its construction, giving oil companies virtually absolute powers to ride roughshod over the interest of Niger Delta communities in terms of who sets up the boards and who decides what projects get to be executed. Tied to this is the criminalization of communities over oil facilities incidents as communities cannot be held accountable for incidents done by individuals”.

He maintained that “holding communities accountable for inability of corporations to secure their pipelines and wellhead as comparable to ascribing banditry to a whole community simply because a bandit carried out nefarious actions in their territory”.

“The clause criminalizing communities appear to be inserted so as to ensure that the host communities’ funds eventually are used to pay for the irresponsible action of oil companies who neither carry out needed integrity checks on their facilities nor replace obsolete ones.”

Buhari’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina had announced in a statement he personally signed and made available to the Media that the President assented to the bill on Monday, August 16, 2021, informing that it was “in his determination to fulfill his constitutional duty”.

The passage of the bill by the Senate and House of Representatives was greeted with vicious condemnation over the recommendation of 3% and 5% allocation, respectively, to host communities from the proceeds of oil and gas exploration.

The HOMEF Director expressed worry that expectations that the PIB passage, which “has been a rough ride for people of the Niger Delta and other stakeholders since the days of the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo, would represent a source of joy have now been dashed.

He regretted that the President did not consider addressing key defects in the bill that needed to be addressed before being signed into law, stressing that “it makes nonsense of Nigeria’s climate change Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs),” and “also locks in gas flaring which is a major emitter of greenhouse gases by extending a regime of insignificant fines”.

Bassey further flayed the provision on deploying 30% of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to speculate for crude oil reserves at a time when a global shift from fossil fuels.

“At a time when the world is shifting from fossil fuels, 30% of the profit of the NNPC would already be sunk into searching for oil field dusters or bottomless speculative search for crude oil in so-called frontier basins.”