Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Zainab Ahmed has called for a more active collaboration with civil society organisations to help correct the lingering issues of accountability in the oil and gas industry.
Constituting a 15-man committee in Abuja, Ahmed said that the activists would advance the reforms in the sector, as well as disseminate more channels across board to monitor and enthrone greater transparency in the system.
Ahmed said: “the trends and the patterns are the same, and the civil society as they get more informed and we engage them more and they understand the issues, they will be able to intervene at the best of times”, insisting that “things are not going on well at the oil and gas sector”.
“Revenues that are due to the federation are not all going to the federation as they are supposed to. There is a need for us to bring out these issues, to discuss them and to cause whoever is responsible for them to begin to make corrections. We require accountability in the oil and gas and the mining sectors of this country.”
Against the backdrop of the recent $49.8billion controversy between the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), and the Central Bank, she noted that the saga is only a confirmation of several reports released by NEITI, pointing cases of unremitted funds to the federation account, insisting that there is the need to urgently fish out those behind these fraudulent acts in the oil and gas sector.
