Nigeria Adopts Key Petroleum Reform Law
The Nigerian Federal House of Representatives this week finally passed the long-awaited Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB) into law.
The bill, passed by the Representatives, is the same one as the Senate passed last year, after review processes of at least six months.
The aim of the PIGB which is in three parts is to establish the legal and regulatory framework, institutions and regulatory authorities for the Nigerian oil and gas industry, as well as establish guidelines for the operation of the upstream and downstream sectors.
Because the bill in an earlier form was first introduced in 2000, the passage by the Lower House is significant. It will lead to a restructuring and unbundling of operations at the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) and the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
Many experts have called for the passage of this bill, specifically to aid in root and branch reform within the NNPC, which is often called a black box as most of its decisions taken are shrouded in mystery. As a result of this, challenges like fuel scarcity, and power failure ravage the country and financial misconduct within the NNPC have become the norm.
NGW reported in June 2017 that the House had stalled passing the bills into law after the Nigerian Senate had passed the bill in May 2017. This was due to the fact that members of the House felt that the bill had not been properly reviewed by the Senate.
The House committee chairman on petroleum, Victor Nwokolo had said in June 2017, that the Senate had not properly addressed the issue of revenue collection among other issues. For this reason, an ad-hoc committee headed by chief whip, Alhassan Ado-Doguwa, was set up to probe the bill.
On January 17, the House speaker Yakubu Dogara said that Nigeria's president Muhammadu Buhari needs to sign the bill into law, so as to ease the processes in the Oil and Gas sector, through unbundling the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and creating other bodies. Dogara said passage of the PIGB into law is a historic and landmark achievement by the 8th National Assembly.