Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Mike Ozekhome has condemned the Petroleum Industry Bill assented to as an Act of Parliament by President Muhammadu Buhari.
While describing the Act as a mere ruse, carefully crafted, to actually do irretrievable violence to Nigeria’s progress, Ozekhome said it constitutes a direct assault on age-long cherished principles of federalism and the doctrine of separation of powers.
“The PIB Act seeks to frontally attack the provisions of section 162 of the 1999 Constitution, which state that all revenues accruing to the Federation shall be paid into a Federation account from which sharing shall be made amongst the three tiers of government – the federal, government, the 36 states and the 774 Local Government Areas of Nigeria.
“No expenditure can be made by the Federal Government outside the provisions of section 162. Nor can any monies be expended without going through an Appropriation Bill through submission of budgetary proposals”, he said.
He added that to the extent that the Act seeks to redesign the provisions of the Constitution to that extent is unconstitutional and must be struck down.
In further condemning the Act, the senior lawyer argued that the NNPC, ought to be totally unbundled, to make it more viable, productive, transparent and accountable to the Nigerian people.
He queried why the federal government alone should have shares in NNPC to the total exclusion of the other three tiers of government, major stakeholders, oil-bearing communities and the long-suffering people of the Niger Delta.
According to him, the Act was never designed to reform the NNPC, nor passed to advance the principles of federalism or doctrine of separation of powers.
“The 36 States Attorneys- General should immediately approach the Supreme Court and challenge this latest Federal Government’s impunity and the outrageous acts of executive lawlessness and legislative rascality we are beholding, by invoking the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction under section 233(1) of the 1999 Constitution.
“That is the way to go. Allowing the Act to stay will further cement the present misguided unitary system of government that Nigeria is currently operating, under our thinly garnished disguise of a pseudo-federalism” he added.
