President of the Senate, Dr Ahmad Lawan, yesterday committed the National Assembly to an expeditious passage of the long-delayed Petroleum Industry Bill .
Lawan added that the legislature will give expeditious attention to the passage of PIB, which before now both local and multinational firms had worked to frustrate its passage.Lawan, who didn’t identify those frustrating the passage of PIB, equated the bill to a demon that has defied every effort to deal with it in the past 20 years.
“We are not going to be selfish that only Nigeria should have, yes, because the resources are here, we must get the benefits of the resources here. The businesses, the IOCs which are here, will also benefit from their investments. In fact, oil is everywhere now so we have to have a legislation that will create a very competitive environment that we can get investors in oil and gas from Ghana, from Angola, from Algeria, all to move to Nigeria.
“So when we say we will do it, some of them came to me and said Senate President, you see, you don’t have to do this thing now. It’s not going to work. I said we will try. So we started. “In a week, they thought it was a joke. In a week, we finished the amendment because the House was on recesses. The day they returned, they concurred. Mr. President knew how important that amendment was. He was in London and that bill was flown to him and he signed it on a Sunday just to give that amendment the validity that was needed.