In less than two weeks of President Muhammadu Buhari inaugurating the oil deposit found in Kolmani, a border town between Gombe and Bauchi for exploration, the neighboring states have traded words accusing each other of betrayals over the ownership of the oil site.
Kolmani located in the North eastern part of Nigeria is said to have one billion barrels of crude oil reserves and 500 billion standard cubic feet of gas and has attracted $3bn investments at the moment.
Although the President gave assurance during the inauguration that the two neighbouring state governors will support and cooperate with the localities, things haven’t been smooth among the residents and even officials in the two states over the ownership of the site.
It is worthy of the president to note and appreciate the investment gotten so far at a time when the world is clamping down on fossil fuel and even the country is advocating for cleaner energies.
He said: “It is, therefore, to the credit of this administration that at a time when there is near zero appetite for investment in fossil energy, coupled with the location challenges, we are able to attract investment of over $3bn to this project.”
While it seems a potential problem is brewing which is best to nip at the bud, Kolmani resident, officials of Gombe and Bauchi state needs to tackle a bigger problem by taking the lessons Nigerians learnt from the oil exploration in Niger Delta and not make the same fire burn us in this country once again.
Although there is the Petroleum Industry Act, PIA that crowned the 20- year effort of reforming the industry. The PIA is meant to strain relationship problem between the host communities and oil companies by creating the Host Community Development Trust Fund (HCDTF) with the sole purpose of fostering sustainable prosperity, providing direct social and economic benefits from petroleum to host communities, and enhance peaceful and harmonious coexistence between licensees or lessees and host communities.
So while the oil companies give 3% of their expenditure to the host communities, the host communities must ensure their oil and gas assets are secured.
The issue of environmental and air pollution is a major concern which made Indians and other developing countries rise against developed countries at the just concluded climate change conference COP27 in Egypt to demand for complete phasing out of fossil fuels.
In Nigeria, despite government promises to clean up Niger Delta, especially ogoja, the air pollution in that space and no access to drinking water continue to rise. The region known for their fishing activities and trading was made to completely leave their means of livelihood which increases the militancy in the region.
Although Nigeria has passed several laws to stop this environmental degradation, it has yielded no tangible effect . In the same fashion, PIA penalizes companies for gas flaring and provides that the revenues from the penalties will be used for environmental remediation and relief of the impacted host communities.
For this to have an effect, the host communities must have a grip on both the government and the oil companies and ensure the penalty must be steep enough to achieve its intended purpose. If it is not, oil companies will continue to flare gas.
