By Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour
Since President Muhammadu Buhari signed into law on November 4, 2019
the amendment to the Deep Offshore and Inland Basin Production Sharing
Contracts Act, Cap D3, Laws of the Federation (LFN) 2004, it has
become the swan song for Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Lord of
Bourdillon.
Specifically, he has found in it an attack point to assail the
leadership of the Eight National Assembly under the leadership of Dr.
Abubakar Bukola Saraki. We all know that throughout his life time,
Tinubu will continue to belly-ache over the fact that Saraki and
Yakubu Dogara beat his candidates to emerge as Senate President and
Speaker respectively in 2015. That is why Tinubu has continued to
attack the leadership of the last National Assembly.
He had written an article in a national newspaper and even in a speech
presented on his behalf yesterday at a book launch in Abuja, he
decided to use the new Deep Offshore law as a double instrument to
curry favour from the Muhammadu Buhari Government as well as to attack
his enemies in the previous National Assembly.
However, one is at a loss what Tinubu is celebrating in that law. As
somebody with a background in the Petroleum Industry, it should be
clear to him that the government did not need the amendment of the old
law to derive the benefit that it is now expecting from the new law.
The old law had clear provision which allowed government to review the
Production Sharing Contract (PSC) once oil price is above $20 per
barrel or after every five years. In fact, the first review of the PSC
ought to take place in 2004 but it was not done.
Though the Directorate of Petroleum Resources (DPR) gave a notice for
the review in 2007, nothing happened. Also, the expected review in
2013 and 2018 was not done. And these are executive actions. Also, the
Buhari administration came into office in 2015 and did nothing on the
PSC till late 2019 when it rushed a bill to the National Assembly that
was equally passed in a hurry.
What then is the fault of Saraki, Dogara and the leadership of the
last National Assembly? Why is Tinubu thinking he can draw political
advantage from the signing of the law and viciously attacking the fine
gentlemen that he hated so much for beating him in the game of power
through the amendment of a law that conferred no new advantage on the
nation?
In his speech at the Abuja book launch on Tuesday, he described the
leadership of the Eighth National Assembly as “reactionary elements
that fought for business as usual and against reform” and added that
the “new National Assembly (is) committed to progressive reform”. This
statement should make any serious minded Nigerian to laugh heartily.
Tinubu who claimed to be a “progressive” with an experience in the
Senate, though for only 18 months under a military arrangement, should
know what a genuine legislature is. Is the present National Assembly
what a genuine democrat should be proud of?
A National Assembly which is processing a law to establish a
commission on hate speech and criminalizing freedom of speech is
Tinubu’s ideal of a “progressive National Assembly”? A legislature
that is working on a bill to suppress the operation of the social
media is Tinubu’s model of a “progressive” law making body. A law
making body that is debating a bill on astronomical increase on the
Value Added Tax even when members have not seen a copy of the bill is
a “progressive” one because Tinubu wants to be in the good books of
President Buhari.
A National Assembly that prides itself as a lackey of the executive
and ready to pitch tent with the Presidency against the people is
“committed to progressive reform”, according to Tinubu, because he
wants to be president in 2023 and believes Buhari is the one that can
make him president and he must do everything to appease Buhari.
Even Buhari and his loyal kitchen cabinet members are seeing through
Tinubu’s deceptive game. They know he is only doing all this jumping
up and somersault because of his 2023 ambition. They know they cannot
trust a man who once claim that he will support Buhari even if he will
spend all four years of his second term on the hospital stretcher. The
man is just a pretender who wants power at all cost.
The real reactionary element is Tinubu. A man without ideology who
will change at the drop of a pen whenever it suits his ambition and
his insatiable hunger for acquisition of wealth is not real. He is
always fake in everything.
If Tinubu is a progressive, he will speak out on some of the
retrogressive, reactionary and anti-democratic bills and actions
coming out of the current National Assembly. Very soon, we are sure
his new found love, the Deep Offshore (amendment) law, will wane and
he will move on to something else.
*Rhodes-Vivour is a public policy expert, an architect and was the PDP
Lagos West Senatorial candidate in the 2019 National Assembly
elections
