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Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The member of the House of Representatives representing Degema/Bonny Federal Constituency of Rivers State , Farah Dogogo has described the Presidential Artisanal Gold Mining Development Initiative (PAGMDI) as a smokescreen for resource control for a section of the country.
Dogogo in a statement by his special assistant on media, Ibrahim Lawal, alleged that PAGMDI is designed to gold enable miners to be fully responsible for the sale and distribution of their mineral resource, unlike what obtains with crude oil in the southern part of the country.
According to him, going by the, the structure of PAGMDI, there would be 100 per cent derivation revenue for areas where there are gold deposits, against 13 percent derivation revenue for oil producing communities.
The lawmaker stated that the same benefits accruable to areas with gold deposits under PAGMDI should equally be extended to oil producing areas.
Dagogo added that “the whole PAGMDI scheme is a smokescreen for resource Control. It is all semantics designed to deceive Nigerians but heavily skewed to favour a particular section of the country. The Nigerian Government had at several times denied the South South, the South East and the South West the right to control their resources, why then will you allow the North to control its resources through the cover of PAGMDI?
“The difference is very clear, what we have in the South is 13% derivation revenue, whereas in the North with PAGMDI, it is 100% derivation revenue. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”
