Work completed, PIB to be passed in June - Senate President

Ahmed Lawal, Nigeria Senate President has said that lawmakers will pass the PIB this month as bot committees in the upper and lower chambers are now writing the final report.

Lawal said this in a speech at the fourth edition of the Nigerian International Petroleum Summit (NIPS) on Monday.

His speech followed remarks by Femi Gbajabiamilia, speaker of the House of Representatives who said that though the lawmakers imposed a deadline of April to pass the bill but it could not meet the deadline because it was important to get it right after 20 years of failed attempts.

“It is the role of the National Assembly to play a balancing act against many competing interests but what is most important is the national interest,’ Gbajabiamila said.

The Senate President said previous attempts from 2007 were unsuccessful because either the lawmakers or members of the executive branch decided to go it alone.

“In the 9th Senate we have decided that we must have a better way as neither solo efforts from the executive or the legislature have been able to pass it,” Lawal said.

The Senate President further said that the corporative approach where the National Assembly is working with the executive had been proven to be successful.

Isaac Anyaogu

Isaac Anyaogu is an Assistant editor and head of the energy and environment desk. He is an award-winning journalist who has written hundreds of reports on Nigeria’s oil and gas industry, energy and environmental policies, regulation and climate change impacts in Africa. He was part of a journalist team that investigated lead acid pollution by an Indian recycler in Nigeria and won the international prize - Fetisov Journalism award in 2020. Mr Anyaogu joined BusinessDay in January 2016 as a multimedia content producer on the energy desk and rose to head the desk in October 2020 after several ground breaking stories and multiple award wining stories. His reporting covers start-ups, companies and markets, financing and regulatory policies in the power sector, oil and gas, renewable energy and environmental sectors He has covered the Niger Delta crises, and corruption in NIgeria’s petroleum product imports. He left the Audit and Consulting firm, OR&C Consultants in 2015 after three years to write for BusinessDay and his background working with financial statements, audit reports and tax consulting assignments significantly benefited his reporting. Mr Anyaogu studied mass communications and Media Studies and has attended several training programmes in Ghana, South Africa and the United States