The Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has sought the review and approval of stakeholders in the Extractive Industries to release the 2021 Audit Reports of Oil, Gas, and Solid Minerals.
NEITI’s Executive Secretary, Dr. Orji Ogbonnaya Orji made the request at the Stakeholders’ Roundtable for the Review and Approval of the NEITI Audit Reports on Wednesday, August 16, 2023, in Abuja.
Dr. Orji noted that the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) Standard which guides NEITI operations requires that the Multi Stakeholders Group (MSG) which oversees the EITI reporting process and implementation in Countries approve the industry reports produced before they are released to the public.
However, he said, in Nigeria, the MSG known as the National Stakeholders Working Group (NSWG) was among the Board of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) dissolved by the President on June 19, 2023.
He said, after extensive consultation with the international secretariat, it was agreed that representatives of Companies, Civil Society, Media, and Government should be invited to review, deliberate, and approve the reports.
The NEITI boss said, this approach was adopted in approving the 2019 Industry Reports immediately after he assumed office.
“This is not the first time we are adopting this approach as you will recall that we had a similar experience when approving the 2019 Industry Reports immediately after my assumption of office.
“We had no Board then. The global EITI gave Nigeria a waiver and approved that NEITI should convene a multi stakeholders’ roundtable to review and approve the release of the reports”, he said.
The Executive Secretary said, the 2021 NEITI Industry Reports of the oil, gas, and mining industries covered a total of 69 companies and 12 government agencies, and one state-owned enterprise for the oil and gas reports while a total of 1, 214 companies with three government agencies were covered in the report of the solid minerals sector.
“The objectives of the reports were to establish the quantities of minerals produced and utilised in the country”, he said.
The reports, according to him, “also sought to establish the revenue paid by oil, gas, and mining companies and how much of such revenues were actually received into government coffers.
“Other areas of focus by NEITI are to identify investments made by the Federation or the Federal Government in the oil, gas, and mining industries, track subsidy payments, company remittances, and liabilities”, he said.
So far, NEITI has conducted a total of thirteen cycles of reconciliatory reports in the oil and gas sector and eleven cycles of reports in the solid minerals sector.
These reports have disclosed total revenue earnings to the government of $741.48 billion from the oil and gas sector and N635.3 billion from the solid minerals sector. These earnings were between the year 1999-2020 (Oil and Gas) and 2006-2020 (Solid minerals sector earnings).
The NEITI reports also disclosed that Nigeria lost over 619.7 million barrels of crude oil valued at $46.16 billion or N16.25 trillion from 2009 to 2020 from theft and sabotage. This amounts to losing over 140,000 barrels of crude valued at $10.7 million daily.
NEITI has reported on subsidy payments from 2005 to 2021 and its huge negative consequences to the nation. In these reports, it was revealed that Nigeria has spent $74.39 billion which translates to 13.7 trillion in Naira.
By the above figures, NEITI said, Nigeria expended an average of N805.7 billion annually, N67.1 billion monthly, or N2.2 billion daily.
