The Environmental Rights Action/ Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/ FoEN), Wednesday, faulted the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) as passed by the National Assembly and called on both chambers to “harmonise and produce environmental friendly bill”.
ERA also cautioned the federal government over its dependant on crude oil at a time “when other nations were already considering a shift from dirty energy to cleaner sources of renewable energy”.
The group urged government to divest the 30 percent allocation to frontier oil exploration in the PIB and invest same in renewable energy “given the deplorable state of the national grid.”
Dr. Godwin Uyi Ojo, Executive Director of ERA/FoEN disclosed this in a press statement made available to journalists on Tuesday in Benin City, the Edo State capital.
Ojo also described the three percent entitlement in the Host Communities Trust Fund as an affront to the suffering rural communities.
According to him, “We, therefore, insist that 10 percent should be considered by the National Assembly as the minimum for the host communities owing to the level of degradation they already suffered.
“And the clause in relation to the communities paying for acts of vandalism and civil unrest should be removed from the host community development fund because this criminalises the people from the outset.”
