How The Failures Of The 7th Senate Led To The NNPC Crisis – Sen Nwogu

Senator Olaka Nwogu, representing Rivers South-East Senatorial district says the crisis rocking the NNPC could be traced to the failure of the immediate past National Assembly to pass the Petroleum Industry Bill(PIB) into law before its exit on June 4, 2015.

Senator Olaka Nwogu

Nwogu, speaking to a correspondent of the Daily Independent in Abuja on Monday faulted the assembly for working hard in other areas but neglecting the the Niger Delta area by not passing the Petroleum Industry Bill before the expiration of its tenure despite all the assurances by the immediate past President of the Senate, Senator David Mark.

He said: “Well, I think it was one of the sad moments of the last dispensation. That dispensation worked hard but not icing the cake with the passage of the PIB is something that broke our hearts especially those of us from the affected areas. It would have helped Nigeria.”

“I always tell people, economics is a very simple thing. If you become too selfish you miss things. If you have a farm that produces for you and you fed from the farm, you should be concerned about the welfare of those in the farm, and even the people who live around the farm so that goodwill will follow what happens there,” he noted.

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The Lawmaker said the failure to pass the PIB just emphazies the weight of  problems in the nation’s petroleum industry and exposes the inability of the country to self-service its domestic debts leading to the current quest for bail out by state governors.

He said: “If you start starving the source of your own wealth, then it doesn’t make sense to me. Imagine that immediately oil price went down, most of the states of this country could not pay their salaries. And that passes a message that we are still dependent on oil but yet you treat the place that oil comes from anyhow.

“Once it came to a point where the people from the oil producing areas will get a better deal, politics crept in and it made it difficult for that bill to be passed.”

Meanwhile, revelations have been made on how the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) generated about N8.1trillion but paid only N4.3trillion to the federation account between 2012 and May 2015.

This was disclosed by Edo state governor, Adams Oshiomhole after the federal economic council meeting two weeks ago.

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