President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, has disclosed that there are forces within and outside the country working desperately to frustrate the consideration and passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill presently before the National Assembly.\u00a0
Speaking when some journalists visited him on the occasion of his birthday anniversary in Abuja on Tuesday, Lawan said, “The PIB is like a demon. That PIB thing, there are people both inside and outside the country, who would work against it, but it is going to take the strength of our patriotism to pass it,\u201d he said.\u00a0
According to the Senate President, it took the firm resolve of the National Assembly to pass the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Production Sharing Contract Bill in 2019.\u00a0
He said that the passage of the Bill by the Legislature caused an increment to the country\u2019s revenue profile from Deep Offshore activities from $216 million annually to $2 billion dollars.\u00a0 \u00a0
Lawan, however, assured Nigerians that the same approach adopted by the National Assembly in ensuring the passage of the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Production Sharing Contract Bill would be deployed for the consideration and eventual passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB).\u00a0
\u201cIn 2019, when we said we would pass the amendment to the Deep Offshore \u2013 Production Sharing Contract \u2013 people didn\u2019t want it to happen because they stopped it from happening for twenty years.\u00a0
\u201cWhen it is brought, they\u2019ll come and do something and it will disappear. So, when we said we would do it, some of them came to me and said, you don\u2019t have to do this thing now. It\u2019s not going to work.\u00a0
\u201cWe said, we will try. The second day they came and said, if we do this (pass the PSC amendment bill), they would leave this country, because that will be against some interests.
\u201cI replied: for once, allow us do something for our country. And I laughed, you are not going anywhere. The kind of things you do in this country, where else in the world would you be allowed to do it? So, we are going to do this amendment.\u00a0
\u201cThey thought it was a joke. In a week, we finished the amendment. The House was on recess, the day they returned, they concurred.\u00a0
\u201cMr. President knew how important that amendment was. He was in London, and that bill was flown to him. He signed it on a Sunday, just to give that amendment the validity that was needed.\u00a0
\u201cFor that singular act that we lost billions of dollars, where we were supposed to be given $2 billion dollars, they were giving us $216 million. But from last year after the amendment, it is now $2 billion dollars.
\u201cPeople didn\u2019t celebrate us, even though they knew what happened. That was what we did for our country, we are proud of ourselves as members of the National Assembly that we have done something worthwhile for our country. That is what we intend to do with the PIB by the grace of God,\u201d the Senate President said.\u00a0
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President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, has disclosed that there are forces within and outside the country working desperately to frustrate the consideration and passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill presently before the National Assembly.\u00a0 Speaking when some journalists visited him on the occasion of his birthday anniversary in Abuja on Tuesday, Lawan said, “The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":30638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[2761,850,241],"class_list":["post-30637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","category-news","tag-demon","tag-pib","tag-psc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}