Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, NEITI, Monday, indicted the Federal Government for the high rate of corruption in the hydrocarbon sector of the Nigerian economy.
Speaking at workshop in Abuja, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, Executive Secretary, NEITI, disclosed that the determination of the Federal Government to protect sensitive industry information is frustrating efforts to ensure transparency in the oil and gas industry.
According to her, refusal of the Federal Government to mandate the relevant agencies to open up registers of licensed entities and contractual engagements in the oil and gas sector to the public is undermining effort to ensure transparency in the sector.
She further stated that this act of indecision by the Federal Government pushes NEITI to regularly manoeuvre in most cases, to get information from operators, during the course of the preparation of its audit reports.
She explained that countries with less experience and capacities in managing extractive industries like Ghana, Liberia and the Gambia were ahead of Nigeria in opening up licensed registers and contracts to the public.
She said, “The major challenge we have in Nigeria in implementing EITI is our inability to open up the licensing registers of the oil and gas companies; it is our inability to open up and put in the public domain operating contracts for the oil and gas sector.
“Those are our major challenges but what we have done in NEITI with the guidance of the National Stakeholders’ Working Group (NSWG) is that we have looked at the standards and insist that, standards are not really in the public but what did the requirements ask for?”
