Niger-Deltans should allow NDDC focus on its core mandate —Nwaoboshi

Senator Peter Nwaoboshi, who represents Delta North Senatorial District at the Senate, is former Chairman, Peoples Democratic Party PDP in Delta State and currently, Chairman, Senate Committee on Niger Delta Affairs. He speaks, in this interview with journalists, on the recently-amended Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) Act and issues that led the National Assembly into taking the steps to amend the Act. BOLA BADMUS brings the excerpts:

What actually made you to initiate the move to seek an amendment to the NDDC Bill?

If you recall, the Niger Delta Development Bill was promulgated in 2000 and it was one of the first bills that the then President Olusegun Obasanjo refused to assent to and the National Assembly had to override him and it became an Act of the National Assembly and, therefore, it became a law.

When I became the Chairman of the Niger Delta Affairs in the Senate, I went through the bill and l decided something must be done and that brought about the now amended  NDDC Act. And in spite of what should have been the major inhibitions of first time caller at the hallowed chambers of the Senate, l defied all odds not only to carve a niche for myself as an articulate and active lawmaker, robust debater and a proactive visioner, but also as an indomitable champion of the cause of the Niger Delta and its long marginalised people, for whose sake l have successfully championed the effective amendment to the NDDC Act of 2000.

Don’t you think NDDC is underfunded?

First, there was the problem of NDDC being under-funded; there was no sufficient fund to run it. The Federal Government owes NDDC almost N1 trillion as I speak with you now and NDDC runs a deficit, in terms of their exposures, of over N1.2 trillion. That is their debt profile and the Federal Government is not paying. They are supposed to pay over a period of some years. When you go through the law, you will see that they were supposed to pay 50 per cent of the Ecological Fund due to member-states. Fifty per cent of that Ecological Fund that is due to member-states is supposed to be paid to the NDDC but as I speak with you now, not one kobo has been paid from the ecological fund to the NDDC.

Another source of revenue is from the oil and gas processing companies. Now, if you go to the oil companies, the law says that they should pay three per cent of their total annual budgets to NDDC. When I came in and we looked at this problem of under-funding, we discovered that they were not able to meet their obligations. We now asked ourselves, if the NDDC was going to get 50 per cent of the ecological fund which is due to states in its mandate area, get three per cent of the total annual budget of the oil and gas processing companies and also the Federal Government is to pay a particular percentage to them, then there is no reason it should be under-funded. So, the question was what is really happening? Why is it that they are not being paid and why all these problems? So, we said let us find out why all these are happening.

It was in the process that we found out that no oil company gives NDDC their actual budget and so, the three per cent was just whatever the oil companies decide to give to the NDDC. In fact, some of them were even arguing that it is three per cent of the real budget, not even three per cent in terms of their annual budget, that is what they spend; that is not the ideal thing. When we looked at all these, we said let us do a public hearing to find out truly why the NDDC is in this debt problem.  We went further to discover that the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) or even the other gas companies, none of them had paid one kobo for the past 17 years and we asked why, after all, the law is clear. In the process, we discovered that LNG said that they went to court with NDDC and late Justice Nwodo of the Federal High Court gave judgment in their favour. They also went to the Court of Appeal and then they proceeded to the Supreme Court. Due to the fault of the legal team, they didn’t meet up the period to file their documents and the Supreme Court struck out the appeal on technical grounds, meaning, in effect, that the NDDC lost. So, when we invited the LNG, they just came with the Supreme Court judgment and said, ‘we have a judgment at the Federal High Court, we have a judgment at the Court of Appeal and since we have all these judgments in our favour, we are not going to pay.’

As a lawyer, I asked for a copy of the judgments. I went through the full judgments and I said, ‘okay, we have a way out of it.’ In fact, my brothers in the Lower Chamber, the House of Representatives, started the process of amending the LNG Act and, in the process, the LNG started going round the whole country, using all their connections and all of them were putting pressure. They went everywhere, to the then Acting President, Yemi Osibajo,  elsewhere, even foreign countries got involved, almost everybody got involved and they were now putting pressure on the National Assembly as if they (National Assembly) were just out to spoil the source of revenue for Nigeria. But the House of Representatives went ahead to amend the LNG Act, removed their waivers and some of the incentives given to them. But I felt that was a very long journey and it was going to attract many issues and I said, ‘Let us just amend that particular section.’

Having looked at the judgments of the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court and the Federal High Court, I knew where the problem was and said what we wanted was to amend this section and, in the process, that was how we decided to bring more revenue for the NDDC.

When did the journey to amend the Act actually begin?

The journey started when we discovered all these flaws; we said let’s deal with these issues. To deal with this particular section, we started sometime about one year ago. We had to even invite the gas companies, held series of meetings with them. They made their own case and eventually, we held series of meetings with their boards. We even invited their whole board. They met with us; we met with the leaders, they also met with the Senate President and all of them and we continued talking. You can see that when we brought the bill to the Senate for second reading, no single person opposed it and when it went to the House of Representatives, it was not opposed by anybody and the president, within a period of two or three weeks, signed it into law.

It would appear that you have a deep reach and penetration in the National Assembly given the ease with which the bill was passed.

First, the issue is that everybody in the National Assembly, from the patriotic side, whether you are from the North or anywhere else, believed that there is the need to adequately fund the NDDC. Secondly, the people from that geopolitical zone, the South-South, see it as a duty to make sure that that place is  well funded. So, for everybody from the South-South, whether as a senator or as House of Representatives member, it is a call to duty because that is the commission that was established to serve the whole people of the South-South and our brothers from Ondo. So it was a popular bill, it became very popular in the National Assembly.

And of course, they saw and did not like the fact that the gas-producing companies for 17 years in the area were not contributing to the development of that area directly to the NDDC; so, it was a very popular bill. And like I told you, they were looking for any way to make sure that these people contribute. It is the popularity of the bill and also the feeling by some people that the undeserved under-funding of NDDC is not right as well as the nationalistic feeling of Nigerians; those are the reasons it was popular.

Please tell us the effects of this particular Act that has been amended in relation to development of the South- South region?

It’s going to give them more revenue and let me say that I must thank the president because the bill was signed into an Act on the last working day of the year and it means that the Act took effect from last year, 2017. The moment it was assented to, it became a law.

So, the LNG has to pay for 2017; they just have to pay. In the process of negotiation with the oil companies when the bill came, the gas companies also became interested and they saw that there was no way that they would not be asked to pay something. They threatened that they were going to go to court and we said ‘okay, you can go to court.’ But we now had to discuss with them on the issue of feed gas.

When you look at the bill, you see feed gas. ‘Minus the cost of feed gas,’ that was a compromise we struck with the gas companies. Let me explain what they mean when they are talking about that and when they say ‘after deducting the feed gas.’ One of the things they were canvassing for is to avoid what they see as double taxation. Shell, for example, is a major shareholder of LNG. Now, Shell is saying that, ‘If I am paying three per cent of my annual budget to NDDC and you are also asking me to pay three per cent from the gas I produce because it’s from that budget I produce all these things, when I have given you three per cent of my annual budget, that would be unfair.’ So, Shell said that would be double taxation. Then all the other shareholders in the LNG, who are major oil companies, said they would not accept it (double taxation). Essentially, they said, ‘If you are going to ask us to pay three per cent after we have paid another three per cent of our annual budget as oil processing companies …if after that then you ask us to pay three per cent for gas processing, it will be double taxation and if you are going to do that, we will go to court.’

Of course, while we appreciate the fact that if they were to go to court, we can be neither here nor there, depending on how the judges will see it, we said let that area of processing be removed, which is called the feed gas, but after that they should pay the rest. The feed gas is about 40 per cent and then the other is 60 per cent. When we looked at it, we said we will remove the feed gas for them, but, at least, they should pay something after 17 years. That is the reason.

Beyond the issue of the law is the issue of implementation. What is the National Assembly doing in terms of oversight responsibility to ensure compliance with the said law?

They will (pay). First of all, we cannot oversight them yet because the law has just gone into effect; the NDDC has to put in the necessary machinery to get their money. If for any reason NDDC reports or we find out during any of our oversight visits or calls that the gas processing companies fail to pay, the other law that is coming and, which  of course,  has been passed by the Senate  and which was also sponsored by me,  gives a percentage as fine for non-payment as and when due.