The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) on Monday explained how efforts to push forward the frontiers of accountability in activities within Nigeria’s hydrocarbon industry are being held back by government-inspired checks on access to critical industry information.

NEITI stated at a pre-validation workshop in Abuja to educate stakeholders in Nigeria’s extractive industry on the upcoming re-validation of the country by the global EITI that the seeming refusal of the federal government to mandate its relevant agencies to open up registers of licensed entities and contractual engagements in the her oil and gas sector to the public is undermining the drive to shine more light on the industry.
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NEITI’s Executive Secretary, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed told reporters that this singular act of indecision by the government pushes NEITI to regularly manoeuvre, albeit the hard way, to get information from operators in the process of preparing its audit reports on the sector which, pundits say, operates opaquely.

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.

“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 said OK, standards are not really in the public but what did the requirements ask for?,” she said.



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