Coalition of Northern Groups (CNG) has said the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) will create more hardships for ordinary Nigerians, especially those in the North if passed and implemented in its present form.
The spokesman of CNG, Abdul-Azeez Suleiman, who addressed journalists in Abuja, yesterday, said the bill is merely an extension of the elite monopoly of the total available economic activity in the country at the expense of ordinary northerners.
He said the passage of the bill is another clandestine move to further weaken the northern economy and warned that all northern representatives in the National Assembly (NASS) will be held responsible if they allow it to be passed into law.
Suleiman said, “The first concern here is bringing together agencies with supervisory roles with an agency that implements policy that is deliberately contradictory.
“Second, a self-funded agency (consumers’ funds) to be merged with government-funded agencies is yet another deliberate contradiction,” he said.
Suleiman, therefore, demanded a comprehensive investigation into alleged underhanded deals between a private operator of a refinery and some members of the National Assembly to influence the passage of the bill which would hand total monopoly of production, transportation and others.
He also called on the attention of the northern leadership and credible section of northern elders, civil society organisations (CSOs) to rise to defend the people of the region by rejecting the PIB.
