₦airaland Forum

The new draft of the controversial petroleum industry bill (PIB) strips the president of the discretionary powers to allocate oil blocks, TheCable understands. The bill now confers the power to allocate petroleum exploration and production leases and licences to the Nigeria Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NPRC) which shall be established under the act. The final draft of the new bill, “Petroleum industry governance and institutional framework bill 2015”, available to TheCable, which was concluded on December 2, 2015, limits the power of the president to appoint members of the board of the regulatory commission. The bill aims to promote transparency and accountability in the administration of the petroleum resources of Nigeria, while creating a conducive business environment for petroleum industry operations. The new draft, which mentions the senate only twice, says the upper chamber would be responsible for the ratification of governing board members appointed by the president. “The appointment to the board in respect of persons appointed pursuant to paragraphs (a) to (d) of this section shall be made by the President subject to confirmation of the senate,” the bill reads. “The chairman and non-executive commissioner shall be persons of high integrity and substantial professional experience; in appointing the chairman and the non-executive commissioner, the president shall have due regard to a fair representation of the technical, legal and commercial interest.” The initial PIB, which has been stuck in the national assembly for nearly a decade, conferred discretionary powers on the president to allocate oil blocks in addition to competitive open bidding. As recently as 2012, the PIB presented before the national assembly said “notwithstanding the provisions of the subsection (3) of section 190 or any other provision of this act, the President shall have the power to grant a license or lease under the act”. The presidential minister In the past dispensation, the minister of petroleum was distinctly different from the president, but with President Muhammadu Buhari as the substantive minister of petroleum he may perform the duties of the president and the minister. The bill grants the minister the power to control the oil blocks under the recommendation of the commission. “Upon the recommendation of the commission, grant, amend, renew, extend or revoke petroleum exploration and production licenses and leases pursuant to the provisions of this act or any other enactment,” the bill posits. The minister also has the rights of pre-emption – that is, the right to purchase of goods by one person or party before the opportunity is offered to others – to all petroleum products in times of national emergency or war. “In the event of a state of national emergency or war, the Minister shall have the right of pre-emption of all petroleum and petroleum products obtained, marketed or otherwise dealt with under any license or lease granted under this act or any other enactment,” it says. The Commission The NPRC is saddled with the responsibility of conducting bid rounds for petroleum exploration licenses, but its recommendation can be subject to the minister, who has the power to grant licenses. The commission shall “conduct bid rounds or other processes for the award of petroleum exploration and production licences and leases, approve all field development programmes” and “allocate petroleum quotas”. One or more bills Industry sources confirmed to TheCable, that one or more bills may be proposed after the framework bill is passed. “This bill does not address refineries, gas flaring and some other matters, extensively. So we expect that another bill, perhaps two, may be proposed, as a break out of the original PIB,” a source said. “Let’s keep our fingers crossed and take it one step at a time.” Previous administrations in the country have been accused of allocating oil blocks to their cronies, without any operational capacity to handle such exploration. Ita Enang, who is now the senior special assistant to Buhari on national assembly matters, had said in 2013 that 83 percent of Nigeria’s oil blocks were controlled by northerners. He called on the senate at the time seize the PIB opportunity to revoke all licences and re-allocate all oil blocks. Follow us on twitter @thecableng Copyright 2015 TheCable. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.thecable.ng as the source

Read more at: https://www.thecable.ng/exclusive-new-pib-strips-president-of-the-power-to-allocate-oil-blocks

dasuki may u never find peace

pcicero:
It was a bit orderly and organised in the 90s until Tinubu started polarizing them by sponsoring cultists to hijack the various parks and garages from the old men.

That's the uncomfortable truth.

ok thank you for the truth... can we now suggest better solutions??

chai

kajoula:
NURTW scraped and Lagos will never be a safe place for us, crime rate will escalate 400%....ibet u.

it can be replaced wiv a better organized coy

ant wey de chop sugar sote e go die inside

dis wan chop money sote him die inside.... useless people


u think death will stop ur probe??...

dis NURTW should be scrapped

change

hang d muderer

Click like if u feel u didnt waste your Vote.

The Federal Government has earmark the sum of N500 billion for social welfare intervention programmes for 2016 fiscal year.

The government also made a provision of N63.29 billion as the Federal Government share of the controversial oil subsidy payment for the same fiscal year.

No provision was however made for kerosene subsidy for the year under reference.

Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) will be funded with the sum of N241.51billion under the headline Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) Excess Crude Account (ECA) & SURE-P.

But essential requirements to benefit from the social welfare package are evidence of school enrolment and immunization certificate.

This is contained in the 2016- 2017 and 2018 Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) and Fiscal Strategy Paper (PSP) submitted to the Senate for consideration and approval.

The document read and circulated to Senators by Senate President, Abubakar Bukola Saraki is expected to be the basis for the 2016 appropriation estimate for presentation to the National Assembly.

According to the document, the Federal Government will collaborate with state governments to institute well-structured social welfare intervention programmes such as: School feeding programme initiative, conditional cash transfer to the most vulnerable and post-National Youth Service Corps grant.

It said that “N500 billion has been provisioned in the 2016 budget as social investments for these programmes.”

The government said, “These interventions will start as a pilot scheme and work towards securing the support donor agencies and our development partners in order to minimize potential risks.”

Under special intervention including cash transfer, home grown school feeding programme and micro credit loans (SMEs, market women etc) which is also covered by the social intervention programme, the government provided the sum of N300 billion for 2016, N339.05 for 2017 and N338.93 for 2018.

The document put the arrears of 2015 Subsidy on Domestic consumption as N150 billion.

The government had also included the sum of N108 billion as the cost of fuel subsidy to cover October to December 2015 in the recently passed 2015 Supplementary Budget of N521 billion.

In 2015, the SURE-P gulped N0.25 billion for running cost and the sum of N20.78 billion as capital expenditure.

The budget for the Presidential Amnesty Programme was slashed from N47.39 billion in 2015 to N20 billion in 2016.

Provisions were not made for the programme for 2017 and 2018 fiscal years.

Provision was made for Frontier Exploration Services to the sum of N39.88 billion.

The budget of the National Assembly was put at N115 billion for 2016 down from N120 billion for 2015.

The government put the sum of N50 billion under the heading of “recoveries of other misappropriated funds.”

Still on recoveries (refunds/recoveries from Strategic Alliance contracts) N137.90 billion while NNPC/CBN N162.43 billion.

The total under the subhead of recoveries of misappropriated funds is therefore N350.33 billion.

On social development, the government said that job creation and social inclusion are key to the administration’s development programme as a means to reducing the rates of unemployment, poverty and inequality.

It said that a phased social welfare programme will be created to cater for a larger population of the poorest and most vulnerable Nigerians upon the evidence of children’s enrolment in school and evidence of immunization.

The government said that it will, in the near-to-medium-term, continue to prune the size of the federal government and its Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) to more efficient levels without compromising efficiency and effectiveness.

It noted that over the medium-term, however, “government will revisit the need to rationalize the agencies of government and strategically implement relevant provisions.”

On the introduction of Treasury Single Account (TSA) the government said that the multiplicity of government accounts had made it difficult to have an accurate picture of the public financial resources.

“Government has therefore enforced the full implementation of the TSA system. Already, this is facilitating a more effective aggregate management and control of government cash balances, which, hitherto, had been maintained in several bank(s) accounts. Government has similarly enforced the full implementation of the integrated payroll and personnel information system (IPPIS) in all MDAs, which should result in some saving,” the document said.

The government also said that the mounting number of claims for increases in salaries and allowances including pensions and other benefits should be curtailed as part of the efforts at rebalancing the structure of government spending.

The government said that the 2016 budget will be structured to provide a stimulus to reflect the economy by investment in key infrastructure and the development of an inclusive economic recovery.

It said that the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio, which at 12%, is one of the lowest in the world, gives room for the fiscal expansion.

It added however that government will ensure that additional borrowing is kept within prudent limits and channeled towards infrastructure.

To that extent, government said that a budget size of N6.04 trillion is being proposed and federal government’s revenue is projected at N3.82 trillion implying a projected deficit of N2.22 trillion.

It said that the ratio of capital to recurrent expenditure is envisaged to move from the current 16/84 to about 30/70 in 2016.

It said that fiscal deficit is targeted at not more than 2.16% of GDP (about N2.22 trillion in normal terms.)


http://thenationonlineng.net/2016-budget-fg-votes-n500b-for-social-welfare/

ok

wailers food is ready.....

The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, Tuesday, revealed that there would be change in the policy direction of the Buhari’s administration in the settlement sector.

This, he said, would commence in the 2016 budget implementation, as the Federal Government would spend N10b to build low income housing estate in each of the state of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

It will be recalled that the Obasanjo’s administration upturned the policy of Shagari’s administration by declaring that government would no longer build houses for people to occupy, subsequently, he sold off all government houses built during Shagari era.

During Obasanjo government, the government through the Ministry of Land, Housing and Urban Development was collaborating with the developers by providing lands for them to build ‘affordable’ housing estates. The policy direction that was replicated by both Ya’Adua and Jonathan governments.

However, Fashola unveiling Buhari’s administration agenda in the housing sector in Abuja, said there is need for the government to review the existing policy in the housing sector to address housing deficit in the country.

He said; “The Housing sector presents an enormous opportunity for positively impacting the economy to promote not only growth but inclusion.
“There have been a couple of National Housing policies and we intend to appraise the most current one to make changes only if necessary.
“Government will lead the aggressive intervention to increase supply, by undertaking construction of public housing and formulate policies that will invariably lead to private sector participation and ownership to reduce our housing deficit.”

Fashola maintained that the government would understudy ‘Jakande and Shagari’s housing estates model to develop an affordable housing unit for the masses, by building 40 blocks in each state.

He noted that the immediate past administration budgeted less in housing sector of the economy, the trends that would be reversed.
“So for us, consistency is key, annual spending is an imperative. We must change the budget for national housing from N1.8 Billion in 2015 to something in the hundreds of billions of Naira that matches our ambition.

“If we can spend N10 billion in each state and the FCT on housing alone every year subject to (a) the capacity to raise the money and (b) the capacity to utilize the funds having regards to our current construction methods and the time it takes to complete construction, which our ministry intends to change by research and industrialization of housing,” he said.

The minister explained that the government would embark on seminars and conferences to ensure proper capacity building for stakeholders in the sector to drive the new agenda.

According to him, “If we achieve this, we will move from where we are now, start construction in all 36 States and the FCT and sustain this as we go along.

“In the housing sector, if we complete our on-going projects, and we get land from the Governors in all states and the FCT to start what we know, using the Lagos Home model, we should start 40 Blocks of Housing in each state and FCT.



http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/12/buhari-to-build-40-blocks-of-housing-estate-in-each-statefct-fashola/

hu steal am??

wailers food is ready

wailers pls ur detailed and skilled analysis is needed for this kind budget.
Thank you...

By Levinus Nwabughiogu
ABUJA – Federal Government has proposed a national budget of N6 trillion for 2016 fiscal year, allocating 30 percent of the budget to the capital expenditure.
It has also approved and submitted the Medium Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, to the National Assembly.

L-R Minister of Women Affairs Aisha Jummai AL-Hassan, Minister of Youth and Sports Solomon Dalong, Deputy Chief of Staff Mr Ade Ipaye, National Security Adviser Major- Gen. Babagana Monguno, Head of Service of the Federation Winifred Ita-Oyo, Chief of Staff to the President Abba Kyari, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Engr. Babachir David Lawal and President Muhammadu Buhari during the Federal Executive Council meeting, held at the Presidential Villa on 7th Nov 2015
L-R Minister of Women Affairs Aisha Jummai AL-Hassan, Minister of Youth and Sports Solomon Dalong, Deputy Chief of Staff Mr Ade Ipaye, National Security Adviser Major- Gen. Babagana Monguno, Head of Service of the Federation Winifred Ita-Oyo, Chief of Staff to the President Abba Kyari, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) Engr. Babachir David Lawal and President Muhammadu Buhari during the Federal Executive Council meeting, held at the Presidential Villa on 7th Nov 2015
Briefing State House Correspondents after an emergency meeting of the Federal Executive Council, FEC, presided by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja on Monday, the Minister of National Planning and Budget, Udo Udoma stated that the in view of the current economic realities, FEC predicated the budget on $38 dollars of barrel of crude oil as benchmark for the MTEF.

He also revealed that the government expected to General a total of 2.2 million barrels of crude oil per day.

He said: “At today’s Council, the Council approved the Medium Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF which sets out the policies of government over the next years. It sets out the fundamental economic underpinning of the budget.

“The highlights are as follows: we project and we are working with $38 crude oil price, we consider that to be very conservative but because of the uncertainty, we felt that we should start with a conservative crude oil price.


http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/12/fg-proposes-n6trn-budget-for-2016/

sai baba

noooo

dis guy should be hanged to Death....

oyoyo

oyoyo

yh.. me like china.. better than d west

the real oga at d top= DASUKI

gooood....more to come..

meanwhile my ambitions not worth d life of any Nigerian but his goons where looting Nigeria Dry...Iranu Abasha

haaaa cee my con3 ohh

Nigerian telecoms authorities have reduced by a more than third a $5.2 billion fine imposed on South African mobile phone operator MTN Group for failing to cut off unregistered users, MTN said on Thursday.
MTN had been in talks with high-ranking officials from the NCC since late October in a bid to reduce the fine.
“After further engagements with the Nigerian Authorities, the NCC has reduced the imposed fine,” MTN said in statement, adding the penalty has been reduced to $3.4 billion.
MTN
Nigeria, MTN’s biggest market, has been pushing all telecom operators to verify the identity of their subscribers, on concerns that unregistered SIM cards were being used for criminal activity in a country facing an insurgency by Islamist militant group Boko Haram.
MTN, which also made senior management changes following the resignation of its Nigerian chief executive, said it would “urgently e-engage” with the Nigerian authorities before responding formally to the NCC decision to reduce fine.



http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2015/12/03/nigeria-slashes-mtn-fine-to-3-4-billion/

them for try am nah

lol

gbege

Gbam