The three percent allocated to host communities, as stipulated in the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) has been opposed by the Urhobo Progress Union (UPU).
In a statement issued to journalists on Sunday in Delta State, the President-General of the union, Joe Omene, said that the bill was a ploy to use NNPC to channel a huge 30% of oil proceeds to the North.”
Omene described the three percent share as “paltry”, despite the “insistence of the people of the region for a just and fair share of their resources with the demand for a minimum of 20% for host oil-bearing communities, what had been passed eventually as Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) is a betrayal of lofty dreams after decades of legislative macabre dance and relentless conspiracies.”
He added, “A paltry 3% is what Northern lawmakers felt should be for the owners and host oil communities, a culmination of a game of wits between Southern Legislators who wanted justice for our people versus Northern lawmakers who connived with International Oil Companies (IOCs) and their principals to ensure those host communities must not be given the insulative and unacceptable 5% they initially offered.
“Even this unacceptable 3% is also redefined to include any pipeline bearing communities such as those areas in the north where oil pipelines pass through to convey petroleum products entitled to the same 3% that oil-bearing communities from where oil is drilled will be entitled.
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“By all intents and purposes, this bill denies the people of Niger-Delta a commensurate entitlement of the resources in our lands while handing out generous benefit for everyone in the value chain other than the owners of the resources, in particular, increasing profits of IOC investors and other people outside the Communities that own the resources and suffer the most from the devastating environmental consequences oil exploration activities.
“The mischievous decision to conflate host oil communities with non-oil-bearing communities in defining host community is a device, first to set up communities against themselves within our region and to recruit other communities against the oil-bearing communities, an old device of divide and rule colonialist strategy to keep our people busy fighting themselves.
“Otherwise, a clear distinction ought to have been made between the former and the latter that are mere pipeline and related infrastructure bearing communities.”
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