BY IBRAHIM IBRAHIM                                                Your Excellency,

I wish to humbly make a suggestion regarding the Oil exploration in Nasarawa State and other northern states, where Oil deposits have been prospected. This is against the backdrop
of unverified information that the exploration activities have virtually come to a standstill. If this is true, my humble suggestion is that all the 8 northern states, which are believed to have Oil deposits, should form or group or an association. The basic aim of the group, which may be called Prospective Northern Oil Producing States’Association (P– PNOPS) or any suitable name, is to use the Association as a veritable tool to exert effective political pressure on the Federal Government to accelerate oil exploration activities in the concerned northern states. This is based on the apparent signs that the incumbent government is not as enthusiastic about oil exploration in the north as the Buhari administration, which made sure that a special fund ( The Frontier Fund) wash set aside, under the Petoleum Industry Act (PIA), 2021, specifically for oil exploration activities in northern Nigeria and the Fund was actively and enthusiastically applied for the purpose. The proposed
P–PNOPS would make would make the work of the Petoleum Technical and Advisory Committee, you recently set up, easier as the issues at stake appear to have political undertones in addition to the technical and economic challenges . I wish to applaud and congratulate your Excellency on that particular laudable initiative and suggest that all the other prospective northern Oil Producing States should emulate Nasarawa State in that regard.
Ideally, the proposed P–PNOPS should have a secretariat and function as follows:
a) Exert political pressure on FGN to accelerate petroleum and Gas exploration activities in the P–PNOPS member-states and any upcoming prospective Oil/Gas producing state(s ) in northern Nigeria.
b) Aquire and exchange or share information among member-states on the petroleum exploration activities in each member -state.
c) Propose ideas and strategies on how to accelerate the pace of Petroleum and Gas exploration activities in member-states.
d) Arrange, coordinate and conduct periodical (and emergency meetings whenever necessary) of the Governors of the P–PNOPS member-states as well as between the Technical and Advisory Committees of the states.
e) Any other function that would enhance or quicken the pace of petroleum and Gas exploration activities in member-states in particular and the North in general.

Ibrahim IBRAHIM is a Fellow of the College of Oil and Gas Exploration Technology Nigeria.