Details
of how the Ministry of Petroleum Resources has been pushing the
passage of the controversial Petroleum Industry bill (PIB) have started
emerging as documents tendered at the Senate yesterday showed that the ministry
earmarked a total of N6.2 billion to facilitate the passage of the bill
currently in the National Assembly.
The documents also showed that the
ministry has earmarked another N1 billion to conduct an assessment of oil
spills in oil producing states.
Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs.
Diezani Alison-Madueke, who tendered the documents when she appeared before the
Joint National Assembly Committee on Gas and Petroleum to defend the ministry's
2013 budget, told stunned lawmakers that the N6.2 billion has been earmarked
for "enlightenment campaigns" on the bill.
The minister confirmed that the
ministry had already spent N110 million out of the amount on the awareness
campaign for the bill which failed in 2010 but insisted that she needed the N6
billion to conduct a "comprehensive awareness campaign" to enable the
PIB to sail through this time.
The documents showed that in 2010, the
ministry spent N94.5 million on the programme, N16.3 million in 2011 and
another N17.2 million was appropriated for it in 2012.
The campaign may also involve lobbying
critical stakeholders, especially federal legislators for the speedy passage of
the draft law, apparently against the backdrop of the intense lobby mounted by
certain multinational oil companies, allegedly to scuttle its passage, Peoples
Daily learnt yesterday.
Mrs. Alison-Madueke told the committee
that the ministry will need N1billion to conduct a full scale assessment and
documentation of oil spills in the nine oil producing states. This does not
include actual remedial work.
Already, the contract for the project
has been awarded to Season Energy Limited. The sum of N86.6 million was
released in 2011 for the project and another N179 million appropriated this
year.
She, however, told the committee that
the Ministry of Finance had only released 41 percent of her ministry's budget
but added that she has recorded 93 percent performance with the releases to the
ministry.
She said: "Out of what was
released we were able to handle 93 per cent performance. Of course we expect
that the balance of our appropriated budget for 2012 would be released within
the fourth quarter and it will allow us within the window of procurement which
is up to march next year, to complete all our projects that is slated for
completion this year and to progress on the ongoing projects for 2012 and go
into 2013.
"So on the basis of what we have
seen and what we have done so far, we are quite okay that at the end of the
procurement period by the time the quarter four releases hit our accounts that
the performance for the year would be pretty good".
Though she lamented that the delay in
the release of funds by the Ministry of Finance did not help matters,
Alison-Madueke denied that there was a rift between her and the Minister of
Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala saying she only read about the issue in the
newspapers.
The ministers also allayed fears that
there will be scarcity of fuel during the end of the year festivities as she
assured that the alleged wide spread irregularities in the importation of fuel
will be resolved before then.
"We try and ensure that now that
verifications in terms of subsidy by the Aig-Imhokuede report has been
completed, payments begin to go out to the marketers; you can see already that
petrol queues are lessening around the country. We will again begin to push. So
it was not on our instance. There have been issues that all Nigerians know. We
cannot eat our cake and have it. If we have exposed issues in the payment of
fuel subsidy and manipulations in that system, then it has to be adequately
investigated," said the minister.
"And, of course, that
investigation meant also that payments phased in until the actual situation was
verified. Now that that has been done, we hope that after a period we will get
back on track in terms of resupplying of petrol to all parts of this country
and we will try as much as possible to ensure that there is no logjam in fuel
supplies this Christmas."
Source:
People’s Daily
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