Senators from the southern parts of the country on Wednesday held an emergency meeting to rework their strategy in order to give the Petroleum Industry Bill a smooth sail in the Senate.
The meeting, which lasted for about an hour, was called just as the Federal Government is pushing for the establishment of the National Frontier Exploration Agency that will ensure the prospecting of crude oil in the northern part of the country.
Although the meeting was held behind closed doors, our correspondent gathered that the senators were worried that the bill could suffer further setback with their colleagues from the North.
A senator, who spoke in confidence with our correspondent, said it was necessary that efforts were sustained at getting more lawmakers to support the contents of the bill in spite of the achievements made during its second reading.
“We will need to find ways of building a consensus on this. We cannot sit back; we have to work a little harder to make sure we get the desired support,” he said.
It was also learnt that the forum’s recent concerns stemmed from the fact that it appeared that some northern senators, who were sympathetic to the bill, were changing their position.
The fear, our correspondent reliably gathered, was that there were feelings that the sympathetic northern senators were being perceived to have sold out and they would be restating their stand in favour of the general opinion of their constituencies.
But Senator Olufemi Lanlehin, though was not in the meeting, said debate on the PIB was unlikely to be different from what was experienced during the second reading.