Human rights activist and constitutional lawyer, Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN), has urged the Government of the 36 states of the Federation to seek redress at the Supreme Court over the new Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) recently assented to as an Act of Parliament by President Muhammadu Buhari.

In a statement on Thursday, titled, “The New PIB Act: Robbing Peter To Pay Paul,” Ozekhome said the Act, “Is a mere ruse, a monstrosity, an artifice and device, carefully crafted, incubated and delivered, to actually do irretrievable violence to Nigeria’s progress and Juris corpus”.

‘To remedy the situation, he advised, the Act must be struck down with the constitutional sledgehammer of section 1(3) of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria. The panacea? Simple.

“The 36 States Attorney-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 pseudo-federalism” Ozekhome stated.

“The Act 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 states 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,” he said.

Ozekhome submitted that in a sane clime, the NNPC ought to be totally unbundled to make it more viable, productive, transparent and accountable to the Nigerian people.
“But, alas, most curiously, the Act has further strengthened NNPC’s hand of non-accountability and non-responsibility, the SAN said.

He queried why the Federal Government alone have shares in the only viable “milk industry” of Nigeria, 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?

“How can an Act of Parliament, rather than assuage and ameliorate the sufferings of a beleaguered people, further compound them by reaffirming the people’s perilous status as slavish hewers of wood, drawers of water, masseurs of ego and sideline onlookers in the exploitation and use of their God-given wealth through their natural resources?” He asked.

(Daily Independent)

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