Bayelsa state governor, Seriake Dickson, has said the current leadership of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) doesn’t give the state the constitutional 13% oil derivation revenue.
Dickson was speaking during an interview with Osasu Igbinedion on The Osasu Show, where he stated that oil-producing states do not get the said 13 percent but paltry sums less than six percent, because NNPC takes what it wants and leaves the rest for the federal government.
“It is a fallacy. In the 13 percent so-called derivation by the constitution, imposed constitution, first of all, what oil-producing states get including Bayelsa is very far from 13%,” Dickson said.
“The most powerful entity in Nigeria is not the federal government. Federal government may deceive itself that it is the most powerful, but of recent, there has been a gradual realisation of that fallacy. The most powerful entity in Nigeria is the NNPC.”
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“The NNPC takes whatever it wants to take and gives whatever in-house accounts and then brings out whatever paltry sum every month to the table as constituting 13 per cent.
“It is from there they will take away subsidy. Yet Bayelsa and the oil-producing states bear most of the subsidy burden and what the Nigerian public is deceived about 13% is actually less than about 5 percent or 6 percent of what should really be coming to us.”
On his take on the call to restructure Nigeria, Dickson said, “these days, I don’t like talking about restructuring because there is a feeling by some people that the entire notion of restructuring doesn’t make sense.”
“If we are serious about a stable, prosperous Nigeria, then I thought that everybody should be talking of not whether we should restructure but how do we but the argument from some people in the federal government is as if there is nothing to restructure in Nigeria.”
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