PIA Not Favourable To Host Communities – King Dakolo

The chairman of the Bayelsa State Traditional Rulers’ Council Bayelsa State, King Bubaraye Dakolo, Agada IV, the Ibenanaowei of Ekpetiama kingdom has carpeted the Petroleum Industry Act describing it as very obnoxious with respect to the welfare of the oil bearing communities and the environment.
Speaking recently in Yenagoa as keynote speaker at a Nigeria Resource Justice conference with the theme: Petroleum Industry Act, Matters Arising for Communities in Extraction Sites organized by a Social Action in conjunction with Bayelsa NGO forum, Bangof, King Dakolo maintained that with the new law host communities will not get their three per cent fundif there is any form of obstruction against oil production regardless of the reality that even the oil companies can cause the obstruction.
He advised the people to unite and see how they can make good use of the opportunity.
He stated, “The community people must put their right foot forward and put in their best anytime. They must not work against one another because what is coming about us is serious. If we are not careful, we go into extinction or may be slavery, because this law is so bad as far as the welfare of the community people is concerned.”
“And so the only way forward is for people to unite, interrogate it, and see the best that could be made out of it. Community people must beware. The PIA says that communities from where oil and gas is extracted will get three per cent of operational fund every year but they will only get that when there is no outage and no disturbance to the oil industry and what we have known is that even the oil companies can sabotage their own equipment. People can come from another country into the Niger Delta to sabotage.”
The monarch wondered how the communities would be forced to bear the burden of safeguarding the operational environment whereas a joint military team cannot effectively control.
Said he, “It is completely stupid for the act to have said that the only way that the people of the Niger Delta could get benefit is when there is no disturbance whatsoever.
“So what they are saying is what the JTF with trained military security experts that has operated here for twenty four years are not able to do is what they want me to and other citizens of the Niger Delta to do. How callous can it be? How caustic can the law ever be?
“Even those who are supposed to have helped in escalating these stories, those who are representing us at the National Assembly, those working as members of the fourth estate of the realm have not been as loud as they should be because the duty of those representing us is to ensure that the best is done at every time but when these instructions go to sleep or get captured by the oil industry, what you have is a PIA that is nonsensical as far as the community interest is concerned”.
King Dakolo said the PIA needs to be properly interrogated.
“It is dangerous as far as environment is concerned. I wish that this was actually done earlier. Note that PIB started close to 20 years ago and people were talking about it because it was favourable to the communities, then they tinkered it and passed a junk eventually. What we are doing now is to ensure that the world hears that there is another obnoxious law that is against the people of the people; that will not quite help the people but it is dangerous to the environment and will never help them.”
Chairman of the occasion, Justice Simon Amaduobogha said that as a jurist, the law as currently passed does not help the environment.
He added, “It has not addressed the issues that can bring solution to the environmental concerns that have been expressed over time by communities”.
Philip Godfrey from Otuesegha community in Ogbia Local Government Area said that PIA was a calculative attempt by the oil companies and the federal government to eliminate the whole Niger Delta people.
He said, “You can’t tell me that as detrimental as the oil exploration activities are, the federal government is just assenting to an act that does not give the community an opportunity to defend themselves.”
Meanwhile the Host communities of Nigeria producing oil and gas has inaugurated her national leadership.