The Senate on Thursday urged the Federal Government to urgently revive steel plants in Nigeria. This, it said, would create employment for the teeming unemployed Nigerians.
This followed a motion by Dino Melaye, titled: “Ailing Ajaokuta Steel Company, a threat to Nigerian industrial growth.”
It also urge the Federal Government to undertake the immediate rehabilitation of rail lines and dredging of the water ways linking the Ajaokuta Steel Company and directed its Committee on Power and Steel Development to undertake a holistic assessment of why the Ajaokuta Steel Complex and other steel plants in Nigeria were not working.
The Committee was also tasked to advance recommendations for effective take-off of the steel industries.
Melaye noted that the steel sector, if properly harnessed, could rival the oil sector as a major source of revenue, adding that Nigeria had spent over N2.1 trillion in the last nine years to import steel.
He expressed concern that despite the abundance of raw materials such as limestone, ore and coal required for the production of primary steel, the nation’s iron and steel sector remained comatose.
According to him, the development of iron and steel is key ingredient in the industrialisation and development of infrastructure and can be the highest employer of labour if properly developed.
In another motion on the need for legislative support to government’s anti-corruption drive, the Senate urged its Committee on Anti-Corruption and Financial Crimes as well as Drugs and Narcotics to liaise with anti-graft agencies on how the legislature could best support them to deliver effectively on their mandate.
The motion moved by Emmanuel Bwacha, also directed its Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters to review all laws relating to economic/financial crimes and corruption, towards achieving speedy dispensation of justice.
Similarly, senators resolved to hold national flags to the chamber at the joint session of the National Assembly on Tuesday next week, where President Muhammadu Buhari would present the 2016 budget.
Also, the upper chamber urged oil companies and other stakeholders to use alternative means of disposal such as re-injection of waste gas into the ground to stop gas faring in the country.
In another motion on gas flaring in the Niger Delta region sponsored by Ighoyota Amori, it mandated its Committee on Gas to conduct an oversight visit to all affected states of the Federation.
Amori expressed worry that neither the National Environmental Standard Regulatory Enforcement Agency (NESREA) nor the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) had implemented anti-flaring policies for natural gas waste from oil production.
“Oil companies in Nigeria find it more economically expedient to flare the natural gas and pay insignificant fine than to re-inject the gas back into the oil wells. Additionally, because there is an insufficient energy market, especially in rural areas and the oil companies do not see an economic incentive to collect gas.
“Saddened that the continuous gas flaring in our country has adverse environmental, climatic, health, economic and other terrific effects on the people,” Amori said.
Furthermore, the Senate invited the director-general of the Nigerian Law School to address it on the incessant increase of tuition fee, saying it believed the over N300,000 tuition fee charged by the school was outrageous and unaffordable to the children of the downtrodden Nigerian masses.
