NIGERIAN Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas (NUPENG) has asked the Federal Government to urgently address the increasing rate of insecurity and corruption in the oil and gas sector, or else its members will ground the economy by withdrawing their services nationwide.
The union, while condemning the recent bomb attacks in the country, especially the attack on the offices of ThisDay in Abuja, Daily Sun, The Moment and ThisDay in Kaduna, stressed that the Federal Government must rise up to the challenges by extending its security equipment to all the media houses in the country.
NUPENG’s president, Comrade Achese Igwe, said this while addressing newsmen on how the high rate of kidnapping, insecurity and corruption in the oil and gas industry had affected the nation’s economy in the last two decades.
Igwe said: “We challenge the Federal Government to urgently address the increasing rate of insecurity and corruption in the oil and gas sector, else our union will have no other option but to call our members to withdraw their services.
While we insist that the high rate of insecurity to life and property in the country, especially in Niger Delta, is affecting the nation’s economy, we, therefore, warn that if the trend of kidnapping in Niger Delta goes unchecked, we will take action in our own way, because we find it difficult to understand why the state governments in the region and security agencies fail to check the criminals.”
Noting that the House of Representative’s probe panel on fuel subsidy did not take pain to visit the depots, refineries, Central Bank and other agencies to get more information and verify and access claims by these agencies on the alleged fraud committed, the labour leader said
“NUPENG was vehement in the condemnation of the use of briefcase carriers as allotees to the importation of petroleum products. And we make bold to say that the probe panel report has vindicated us on our past criticism raised against the fuel subsidy management.”
The labour leader maintained that the union in strong term “condemns the high-level of corruption and rot in the system and, therefore, called on the executive arm of government not to bury the report, but to conduct a thorough investigation without witchhunting anybody.”
On the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), the NUPENG’s president said “we are disappointed that PIB is yet to be re-tabled before the National Assembly by the committee set up to review all the versions, and so, we are at a loss on the authentic version of the bill.”
“While we are not comfortable with the committee set up by the Federal Government to fine-tune the report for presentation to the National Assembly, as it is conducting its affairs in secrecy, we call for a stakeholders’ meeting in order to iron out the grey areas,” he added.
