By Victor AHIUMA-YOUNG

TRADE Union Congress, TUC, has picked holes in the discretionary powers allocated to the President and the Minister of Petroleum in Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, before the National Assembly, saying it is an open invitation for abuse.

President of TUC, Comrade Peter Esele, is particularly concerned about discretionary powers to a minister and the President in such a sensitive industry which is the main stay of the nation’s economy and where the standard all over the world is international best practice.

It would recalled that Comrade Esele, who was part of the Presidential Committee put in place by the Federal Government to prepare the draft PIB, in an interview with Sweetcrude, disowned the draft Bill before the National Assembly.

Esele argued that the discretionary powers accorded to the president and petroleum minister must be removed from the bill to ensure transparency in dealing with operators especially in award of contracts to private investors in the industry.

The former President of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, argued that all licenses, leases, contracts and awards must be through transparent competitive bidding, while all tendencies for discretionary or absolute powers in the bill must be jettisoned.

According to him, the National Executive Council, NEC, of TUC had critically examined the contents of the bill before the National Assembly and established that there were challenges in the bill and resolved that it should be properly debated with a view to ensuring adequate changes.

He said: “My own understanding of “discretionary powers” is a situation where the petroleum minister will issue a directive that an investor should not be given an oil block even when the said investor has met all the requirements. This should not be so, we do not need such powers in the bill. If an investor is qualified for oil block then so be it and if the investor is not qualified, let the law be implemented without fear or favour. This is our concern and we want the National Assembly to address this concern in the interest of the industry and the economy.”

The TUC President contended Nigeria should depart from the old regime of corruption and have a PIB with a balance between government and investors’ interest to ensure growth of the nation’s Petroleum industry. Esele called on the National Assembly to ensure that the PIB reflected a position that would promote and sustain growth and fairness of all stakeholders in the Nigeria project, urging the lawmakers, however, to expedite action in the passage of the bill, because the delay was eroding investors’ confidence in the sector.

In a another development, TUC’s  NEC of TUC has faulted  the National Assembly’s suspension, sine die, of the debate on local government autonomy, saying “with so much resources committed to gaining people’s opinion across the country, it is criminal and inexcusable for the lawmakers to suspend the debate at this stage.” In a communiqué at its meeting in Benin City, Edo State, they argued that local government autonomy was not negotiable if democracy was to take a firm root in the country.

It noted that states or interests opposed to the local government authority were doing the nation’s fledging democracy more harm than good.

TUC also condemned the Federal Government’s budget of N4billion for the proposed First Lady’s Mission Home.

According to the communiqué, TUC “lends its voice to Professor Soyinka’s view that the project is a mind-boggling fiscal misappropriation. The NEC believes that this is another drain pipe on the nation’s economy and called on the federal government to stop forthwith the project. It advised that such money should be applied to create jobs for the teeming Nigerian youths.”

It commended the approval of payments of terminal benefits of electricity employees, but requested that government builds confidence in the process by ensuring the participation of the unions in the sector in the compilation and the computation of the benefits of all employees.