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Sen. Lee Ledego Maeba

In a recent interview of Sen. Lee Ledego Maeba, Former chairman, Senate committee on petroleum Upstream with Leadership Newspaper, we gathered he challenged the current Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), stating that it will kill the Oil industry.

Reacting to the recent agitation on the on-shore, off-shore dichotomy, he state that  the first bill sent to the senate on the same issue talked about derivation fund which gives 10% to the host communities. "This are the host communities within the cadastral map and that means that, you must live within the particular area to benefit from that fund", he said. It is believed that the communities are suffering because state governments have mismanaged the derivation funds which were meant to develop the communities and not the state capitals, for instance if shell has oil fields around the community, they will pay 10% of their earnings to the host community in the derivation fund account to be used for the development of the community.

Further stating that a State like Rivers State received close to N4 trillion over the last 13years from the federation account, meanwhile no real development can be pointed to, as the state remains the same.

"I'm not in support of the agitation for the review of revenue sharing formula, what every Nigerian should know is that people live in these communities where oil is produced, in the North where oil is being discovered it will affect them. When you say on-shore offshore dichotomy, it means you are challenging the people living in that community. Lukman bill referred to people who live in operation areas, he used a clause.That clause could cause war because their people are living in this oil producing areas.", he said, adding that, the dichotomy law should be put to rest because it can burn this country away.

Asked what it will take to reform the oil sector, he said, "It will start with the new PIB bill sent to the National Assembly, the bill will invariably kill the entire industry .we have so much competition now and, counties like Ghana, Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea and the rest have discovered oil. So if we don’t take time, we will become the largest producer of oil in Africa that will stand down as the worst oil producing nation.

We have no business removing the physical terms because it is like sharing the return on the investment that has not started. But in the old bill, we put in all this things in place; we even put the required qualifications for people that will head the institution. So my appeal to my colleagues is that, the bill that was laid clause by clause by the 6th senate is the best bill."

(Edited by: Blueblock)