Dr. Diran Fawibe is one industry player who has seen it all as far as the oil and gas industry is concerned. He has played in both on the public and private sectors of the economy, and is currently the Chief Executive Officer of International Energy Services, a pioneer indigenous service company. In this interview, with Clara Nwachukwu, he cautions against over-politicsing the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, in view of the consequences on the Nigerian economy. Excerpts:

I am sure you must have read the new draft PIB, what are your views on the bill?

In terms of the Content, I think it offers more compromise than    the previous one and I don’t think stakeholders should have any difficulty supporting it, except we want to politicise it as we use to do. If we are not politicising the Bill, it should be able to go through the legislative protocols in the National Assembly.

But of course, we know that traditionally, oil is politics, so we don’t expect that the Bill will scale through without the element of politicking. People should have the overriding interest of the country at heart and allow the Bill to be passed because if we don’t, it would have meant that we wasted about eight years investment in the industry.

Right now, there are lots of what I call suspended animation in terms of the inflow of investments into Nigeria. We would have lost grounds if the Bill is not passed and just as the principals of the National Assembly said that once they resume they will give it accelerated hearing. We are going to hold them to their words and the Press should be able to do a lot of work on it.

You can overwhelm them with a lot of analyses about the benefits of the Bill to the Nigerian oil and gas Industry. A lot of investments are going to other countries and Nigeria is not in the position of the 1970s when we were the only major producer in Africa.

Now Angola appears to be overtaking Nigeria, not in terms of level of production but in terms of inflow of investments. And there are some other countries now in Africa that are discovering oil. See the way people are running after Ghana; we don’t envy them.

Like I said in one of the countries where I made a speech that western investors want to run after a country with proven reserves of about one or two billion barrels of crude and leave the one with 35 to 37 billion barrels of oil, it is their choice.

But if they don’t come, some other people will come and they should not appear like those who want to leave their meat and allow the cat to come and eat their meat. So we still need to put our acts together. This Bill is very important to the growth of Nigerian industry.

But in view of the claims that what was submitted was not what the committee proposed, in addition to the fact that the Senate also said it will present its own bill, don’t you think the new bill will also have a checkered history like the previous one?

Well I know and that is why I said that the overriding consideration should be the interest of the country. But I believe many of them know the loss we have sustained over this and this is one aspect the Executive especially the President should be able to engage the leadership of the National Assembly.

We should follow the practice in some other countries where they have sensitive Bills. In the U.S.A. the president will call the principal officers and key people in the Congress and have discussions with them over breakfast or over dinner and try to gain their support. And I think our president together with the Minister for Petroleum should be able to do this.

There are a lot of things that could be done not on the glare of the television or on the pages of the newspapers. A lot of homework can be done by the executive to get to engage the National Assembly and to let them see the reason, and there will be a lot to give and take at the end of the day and compromise will be the watchword especially with the Bill, even if the new version has been watered down.

The oil majors should not say that Nigerians want to eat their cake and have it. But of course, some stakeholders will be benefitting from the status quo, even when the Bill is not passed they are reaping some benefits and Nigerians are losing. Our people should be educated to know this.

Like I said, we have to overwhelm the country with a lot of information and analyses. You people have to be analytical in the way you tell your stories, you give your reasons for one thing or the other and I think at the end of the day with the give and take you are going to have a fat pay.

But some critics claim it is tilted more in favour of the foreign companies, do you agree?

When you compare this with the previous one you will discover that there have been some improvements. Yes, the issue now is this; we still need some of these foreign companies to bring in the investments. Come to think of it, we are living from hand to mouth life here.

In other words, some of the money we are making from the oil revenue instead of investing it to sustain our economy, we are just spending it. You heard the former Minister of Education and Solid Minerals, Dr. Oby Ezekwisili saying that we have stolen or spent over $400billion of oil money, she is in a position to give some information.

So if we have spent our money and we continue to spend, our democracy has been very expensive and we all depend on the oil money. Tell me, where do we generate most of the funds that Government is spending on one thing or the other and some of the money are being stolen. Nigeria so much now have been projected as Fraud Incorporated and this is based principally on the oil money.

Now, if we have not been able to use our money or our oil revenue judiciously to sustain our economy by moving it to another level and even make it look credible for the 20:2020 dream, then, we need to hurry on investment and foreign investors even including the IOC’s will not come to us simply because we are Nigerians.

We have enough bad publicity already, so we have to create a fair environment for foreign investments to come in. But that is not to say that we sell our birth right for porridge. But at the same time, we have to create a fair environment knowing fully well that there are many other countries where investible funds can be moved to. This means we have to strike a balance when it comes to the issue of creating enabling environment.