By Emman Ovuakporie

ABUJA—MEM-BERS of the House of Representatives Committee on Non-governmental Organisations and Civil Society Organizations have invited stakeholders to make presentations on the alleged contentious Bill on NGOs.

This came as the committee described the fuel scarcity in the country to be the handiwork of few mischievous Nigerians.

House of Representatives

Speaking to Journalists, yesterday, Chairman of the Committee, Peter Akpatason, APC, Edo State, said the scheduled hearing was to enable all stakeholders state their positions on the Bill.

On the NGO public hearing, Akpatason said “the hearing is not only for NGOs but the Red Cross Bill too is on the table for analysis of all invited stakeholders.  Honestly, the NGO Bill was designed in good faith for the benefit of all Nigerians and churches or mosques were never at anytime included in the Bill.

Our quasi financial institutions at local levels are NOT NGOs! These organizations have existed for centuries to serve businesses and commerce of our market women and traders. We want expert opinions and inputs of all stakeholders so that we can properly put all the analyses into perspectives before presentation to the entire House for more legislative fireworks. We have asked them to submit memoranda in hardcopies and must be a minimum of ten copies to our Secretariat.”

On the reactions that the Bill has generated since it was introduced, Akpatason explained that”the Bill has generated a lot of robust debate depending on the perspective you are seeing it from.

“The Bill was designed to sanitize the activities of CSOs and NGOs in Nigeria as it’s done in other climes. Before now there have been several calls that there’s need to regulate these bodies to ensure the interest of Nigerians and protect the civil space as the complaints are global.”

On the current fuel scarcity ravaging the country, Akpatason who is also a former president of Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG,  said “this scarcity has a human element in it because I can’t understand why must there be a scarcity at the eleventh month of the year.

‘’It is a re-surfacing human factor and in most cases when you have scarcity definitely certain people are trying to make profit as there is no plan to hike fuel price. The MD of PPMC too has confirmed that there’s enough fuel with a high level of sufficiency because we Members of the House have been engaging the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC on this issue.”