INC Slams Disparities Between PIA 2021 and Solid Minerals Act, Calls It “Systemic Injustice” Against Niger Delta
The Ijaw National Congress (INC) has raised fresh concerns over what it described as the deliberate non-harmonisation of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021 with the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act of 2007, branding the development a “systemic injustice” against the oil-rich Niger Delta.
INC Global President, Prof. Benjamin Okaba, while briefing journalists in Abuja on Saturday, learnt by PulseNets, strongly condemned what he called a discriminatory legislative imbalance designed to marginalise oil-producing communities.
According to him, “This is not merely an administrative difference but a deliberate and calculated legislative framework aimed at militarising, plundering, and sidelining the Niger Delta, while other regions enjoy a far more equitable and inclusive resource management regime.”
Prof. Okaba, who spoke to PulseNets, stressed that the comparative analysis between the PIA and the Mining Act was irrefutable proof that Nigeria currently operates “a two-tiered system of resource justice.”
Legislative Disparities Exposed
The INC president outlined key areas where the Niger Delta is disadvantaged, including host community benefits, environmental remediation, security approach, policy direction, revenue allocation, and resource control.
He told PulseNets, “The National Assembly must urgently amend the PIA to align its provisions on community benefits, environmental obligations, and ownership with the more equitable standards entrenched in the Mining Act. This review must, at the very least, address the insulting three per cent allocation for host communities as against the more robust 30 per cent in other regimes. Furthermore, the Federal Government must immediately withdraw the Joint Task Force from the Niger Delta and replace it with a civil, regulated security framework similar to the one applied in the solid minerals sector.”
He insisted that the long-term solution lay in returning to true federalism and derivation-based resource control, “as practised in the First Republic, when regions managed their resources for their development.” In his words, “The Niger Delta is not a colony of Nigeria. We will no longer tolerate laws that reduce our people and environment to sacrificial lambs for national unity.”
Three Per Cent Allocation Rejected
Under the current PIA, host communities are entitled to only three per cent of oil companies’ annual operational expenditure, a figure the INC insists is grossly inadequate. The Mining Act, in contrast, mandates that operators sign Community Development Agreements with their hosts, providing scholarships, employment, infrastructure, and enterprise development.
“This three per cent is not even from profit but from operational costs,” Okaba told PulseNets. “It is also managed through a trust fund that sidelines elected state governments and traditional institutions, effectively turning them into spectators. Worse still, the Act criminally imposes a collective punishment clause, holding entire communities liable for vandalism of oil assets. This is unconstitutional, unjust, and inflammatory. The Mining Act has no such provision.”
Double Standards in Ownership and Environmental Protection
While both Acts affirm federal ownership of resources, the INC highlighted how the Mining Act tolerates artisanal and small-scale mining, granting communities in northern and western states a de facto economic participation ruthlessly denied to the Niger Delta.
“Even on environmental protection, the bias is glaring,” Okaba reported. “The PIA’s so-called gas flaring ban is toothless because the minister can grant exemptions at will. Decades of oil spills and flaring have already poisoned our land and water. Meanwhile, the Mining Act requires license holders to minimise impact and restore mined land. Its obligations are clear, lacking the dangerous loopholes that weaken the PIA.”
Militarisation of the Niger Delta
The INC leader lamented that the Niger Delta had been turned into a war zone since 2002, with the government’s Joint Task Force (JTF) Operation Restore Hope deployed to secure oil assets.
“Our people face daily human rights abuses just to safeguard oil facilities that do not benefit us,” he told PulseNets. “There is no JTF in mining states. Despite rampant illegal mining, the government only announced plans for mining marshals as late as March 2024, and even those are yet to be fully operational. This is a calculated decision to keep the oil sector militarised while leaving solid minerals unpoliced.”
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Prof. Okaba maintained that the injustices entrenched in the Petroleum Industry Act must be urgently corrected through legislative harmonisation. He reaffirmed that only a shift to true federalism and derivation-based resource control can end the crisis.
“The Niger Delta will no longer accept a Nigeria that sacrifices our land, people, and dignity for the illusion of national unity,” he declared.
