Connected Development (CODE) has called for the immediate implementation of chapter three of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), which provides direct social and economic benefits to oil host communities in Nigeria.
The CODE Programme Manager, Kingsley Agu, made the call at a sensitisation programme in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
Agu said the essence of the programme was to enable the oil-producing communities to understand the PIA and also teach them how to follow it up for implementation.
Development Diaries understands that the programme was jointly organised by CODE, Power of Voices Partnership, and Oxfam Nigeria.
‘The essence of the event is to take oil host communities through the PIA, 2021 that was signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2021’, he said.
‘We are taking them through the entire section of the PIA as an overview and dwelling more on the host communities’ development. The PIA has five chapters and chapter three focuses on issues about host communities and what should be done for them.
‘Our focus is the fact that host communities need to be given more powers, especially in the implementation of Host Community Development Trust (HCDTF)’.
Also speaking, the State Support Officer at CODE, Charles Mffot, emphasised the need for the communities concerned to understand that what the government had put together was favourable to them.
It was gathered that participants at the enlightenment programme were selected from oil-producing communities in ten local government areas (LGAs) of Rivers State.
The signing of the PIA brought to a close a 20-year effort to reform Nigeria’s oil and gas sector, with the aim of creating an environment more conducive for growth of the sector and addressing legitimate grievances of communities most impacted by extractive industries.
The purpose of the HCDTF, according to the law, is to, among others, foster sustainable prosperity, provide direct social and economic benefits from petroleum to host communities, and enhance peaceful and harmonious coexistence between licensees or lessees and host communities.
Specifically, the law stipulates that existing host community projects must be transferred to the HCDTF, and each settlor (or oil licence holder) must make an annual contribution of an amount equal to three percent of its operating expenditure for the relevant operations from the previous year.
Photo source: Friends of the Earth International