*My books aim to provide solutions—Kachikwu

By Mike Eboh

ABUJA—Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, yesterday, stated that Nigeria’s chances of deriving the maximum benefits from the petroleum industry was narrowing, going by global energy trends.

Speaking during the presentation of three books authored by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, Osinbajo, however, stated that despite the dwindling chances of optimal benefits, the country needed the oil sector in its quest to diversify the economy of the country away from oil.

From left, Vice President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, Minister of State for Petroleum, Emmanuel Ikachikwu and Mrs Ikachikwu launching 3 books: Compendium of Oil and Gas Cases in Nigeria, Legal issues in the Nigerian Petroleum Industry and The Petroleum Industry Bill: Getting to the Yes yesterday in Abuja. Photo by Gbemiga Olamikan.

The books presented are: Compendium of Oil and Gas Cases in Nigeria; Legal issues in the Nigerian Petroleum Industry; and The Petroleum Industry Bill: Getting to the Yes.

Osinbajo said: “As we move to diversify our economy, we are acutely aware that we need oil to get out of oil. Yet, our window of opportunity to benefit maximally from the petroleum industry is narrowing.

“The development of shale oil, which the author spends considerable time on; the increasing breakthrough in renewable energy use; the incredible speed of the expansion of the use of electric vehicles — Japan now has more electric charging stations than gas stations; all point inexorably that the party might be over sooner than we expected.”

Also, to ensure that the country derives the maximum benefits from the petroleum sector, in spite of the global challenges, Osinbajo stated that the Federal Government had had to deal frontally with the critical issues bedeviling the sector, such as the deregulation of the downstream sector and its continuing challenges.

Other issues addressed by the Federal Government
Other issues addressed by the Federal Government, according to him, include vandalism of pipelines and export facilities and the critical drop in production; gas-to-power issue; the urgent imperatives of local refining; cash call problems and the plans to exit that regime and empower indigenous operators.

He further lamented that the country’s oil and gas laws and policy were bereft of quality materials, stating that the three books authored by Kachikwu would help fill that lacuna.

He said: “These books are important because oil and gas laws and policy in Nigeria is notoriously undeserved with quality materials. There are just not enough scholarly materials on the subject. But perhaps of greater importance is the pedigree of the author.

“With Kachikwu’s antecedents, it is expected that the quality of thoughts and insights and solutions that should be on offer should be unique indeed. I am pleased to say that from my assessment of one of the books, he did not disappoint.”

Osinbajo argued that Kachikwu clearly took advantage of the rare convergence of scholarship, contemporary experience and policy wisdom to deliver what were probably today, the most significant contribution to the understanding of major issues and nuances of the Nigerian petroleum industry.

Also speaking, Kachikwu explained that Nigeria was going through difficult times, where thinking outside the box wss absolutely key for the country to succeed as a nation.

He said: “The solutions do not just lie in us, they lies with everybody who is a Nigerian, and in your own very little ways, I urge everybody to continue to think outside the box, seek new solutions, put them forward, and hopefully, ultimately , we will get to that promised land that we all seek.”

Rationale for the book
Explaining the rationale for the books, Kachikwu argued that when you failed to put in textbooks, the experiences that you had in your day-to-day activities in life, they got lost sometimes trajectorily for life.

“I hope you find the book rewarding and interesting, but it certainly is not the last thing in any of the issues that it tends to deal with. Hopefully, if all it does is to create the excitement and the buzz   to enable you do some more research, ask some more questions and seek more solutions, then I think I would have achieved the objective for which I wrote these books,” he said.

He further expressed faith in Nigeria and in the citizenry, stating that “if we work as Nigerians were known to work, and be less acrimonious about the difficulties that we experienced along the path, we will get to the promised land faster than we think we can.”

Delay in passage of PIB
Commenting on the delay in the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, he said, “Obviously, we look at historical PIBs and look at current ones, obviously like you know, the Ministry is putting in a lot of efforts in putting together an executive version of it.

“On governance, we are probably close to one another, ours is probably more detailed. So a lot of what they have done is captured. A lot of what they have not done in the fiscal areas is also captured, because the fiscal area is quite key, that is the gravamen of the petroleum industry.

“I think what this says is that there are a lot of room for thought and the objective of getting to a ‘yes’ is to get to ‘yes’. What are the challenging issues, that had stopped it in the past; what is the politics of it and stepping away from the politics to look at the critical aspects that are essential if you want to succeed in this.

At the ceremony chaired by former Senate President, Ken Nnamani, the books were reviewed by Mr. Gbenga Oyebode; Mr. Fabian Ajogwu, represented by Mr. Mike Igbokwe and Mr. Abubakar Malami, represented by Mr. Ayodele Arowolo; while the books were presented by Mr. Adewale Tinubu, Chief Executive Officer of Oando Plc and Governors of Zamfara and Imo states, Abdulaziz Yari and Rochas Okorocha, respectively.

Kachikwu said he started the book before he was appointed Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC.

“Obviously, the swarm of the job content delayed it quite a bit, but what I kept doing is that each time I travelled, I would find a bit of time, a day or two, to knock some chapters in. Then when you are in the plane, those acts as part of your travel sequences,” he noted.