The House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee on Oil spillage in the Niger Delta region on Tuesday challenged the Management of the Department of Petroleum Resources DPR over its monitoring of compliance of oil companies to prescribed environmental standards of operation and demanded the full list of oil companies that have oil spill records from the Agency.
The Chairman of the Committee, Hon. Amiru Tukur who gave the marching order in Abuja at the commencement of investigation hearing into all clean-ups and remediation by all the oil companies operating in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria vowed that the panel carry its assignment to the logical conclusion
The Chairman who frowned at the absence of most of the stakeholders summoned for the investigative hearing assured that necessary action would be taken to sanction all the government agencies that refused to appear at the investigation.
While demanding that Directors-General DG’s and chief executives of government agencies and oil companies operating in the oil-producing states provide the Committee with a list of defaulting companies that engaged in oil spillage, he threatened to issue them a warrant of arrest for not honouring the invitations duly extended to them.
Other committee members including the Deputy Chairman Hon. Henry Nwawuba also assured the invited oil companies Chief Executives and invited Stakeholders that the committee would discharge its duties without fear or favour.
The Committee, however, walled out the representative of the DG of NOSDRA, Mr Olubumi Akinjide, Director of Oil Spillage of the Agency who sought to represent insisting on his physical presence.
Akinjide had told the probe panel that the DG had asked the committee to be excused from the investigation as he had scheduled a meeting with the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources prior to the meeting.
The Department of Petroleum Resources DPR DG was also represented by a Director Mrs DD Ufondu who informed the committee that the Agency had penalized oil companies that did not comply with the agency’s oil spill directives
He also hinted that the agency had developed a template for monitoring of compliance to oil spillage directives and supplied the committee with all their documents.
The Committee, however, insisted that the Agency must submit a list of oil companies that had failed to comply with clean-up directives by the agency.
Declaring open the investigative hearing earlier, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila had noted that there was evidence that environmental degradation had had and continues to have a devastating effect on the health of fellow citizens in the Niger Delta region.
Gbajabiamila who was represented by the House leader, Hon Alhassan Doguwa said no plan to fix the problems of the Niger Delta would succeed until the damage done by years of oil spills in the region was first addressed.
According to him, “the Federal Government of Nigeria has committed to solving this problem. However, we have not begun to see action equal to the resources allocated or the high expectations we rightly hold.”
“This is not acceptable as long as millions of our people continue to live in an environment that threatens their wellbeing, that takes away their ability to live full lives and deprives them of their God-given right to reap of the land and the waters.”
The Speaker further explained that the investigative hearing was one of the tools the House intend to deploy in service of that mandate.
According to him, “We will do whatever else is required of us, so that we can in the shortest possible time ensure that we have achieved the restoration of flora and fauna in the Niger Delta for the people whose lives and livelihoods depend on them.”
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