The Senate President, David Mark, said on Wednesday that he will readily endorse a penalty of death for perpetrators of oil theft, commonly called bunkering, as four senate committees opened hearings on the Petroleum Industry Bill driving to overhaul the oil sector. Mr. Mark’s comments came as senators, separately, held a six-hour closed door meeting […]
Ordinarily, education is an invaluable virtue while ignorance is an incurable vice. To aspire to know is, therefore, an ambition to get acquainted with what is right and what is wrong, as well as to improve one’s capacity to patronising the former and avoiding the latter. Technical and vocational skill acquisition, character formation, law and […]
Just outside President Goodluck Jonathan‘s office sat 17 ambulances, just in case he or one of his aides fell ill. They were seldom if ever used. No actual health-care facility nationwide had as many, and in fact a few still have none at all. But as soon as a Nigerian newspaper took a photo of the ambulances […]
THE Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria painted a vivid picture of how Nigeria hemorrhages, when its Managing Director Mutiu Sunmonu laid bare before the media the alarming rate of oil pipeline vandalism and oil theft being visited on the company’s Nembe Creek Trunk Line (NCTL) since last January. Within the past two months, Shell […]
Northern senators have given listed their conditions for supporting the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill. Even though the bill has passed second reading in the Senate, the senators have not given up their opposition to the bill. The conditions which they say the National Assembly must address before the bill is passed into law, […]
Ex-militant leader, Alhaji Asari Dokubo and the President of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), Mr.Legborsi Saro Pyagbara have called for the review of oil blocs allocation in the country. This is on account of the allegation that over 80% of the oil blocs in the country are owned by northerners. […]
The civil society groups working on anti-corruption and good governance in Nigeria received with shock the presidential pardon granted to the impeached and convicted Governor of Bayelsa State, Mr. DSP Alamieyeseigha, along with other persons, after a National Council of State meeting held at Aso Rock Villa on Tuesday, 12 March, 2013. The presidential pardon […]
The House of Representatives Committee on Public Account (PAC) is shocked at the level of manipulation Nigeria’s finances are being subjected to by those in authority. Subsequently, the Committee has asked the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Alhaji Mohammed Abubakar, to present the chief executives of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Petroleum Products Price […]
More evidence has emerged to show that global oil giants, Shell and ENI, were very much aware that they were paying over a billion dollars to an ex-con in a shady deal over a Nigerian oil bloc. Despite insisting that they had no previous knowledge that a huge chunk of the $1.1billion (N155 billion) they paid to the […]
In this piece, Oluwole Josiah X-rays the just-concluded Senate debate on the Petroleum Industry Bill and the need for it to become law. The Petroleum Industry Bill is not new to the National Assembly. It first made its debut during the Sixth National Assembly. It was then greeted with mixed feelings while allegations were rife […]