The Accountability in the Extractive Cluster led by Social Action and Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Center (CISLAC) on Wednesday trained students of the Nile University of Nigeria on the required skills to ensure transparency and accountability in the extractive sector.
The Programme Officer, CISLAC, Muna Ugochukwu while speaking at the outreach in Abuja stated that the students outreach with the theme: Transformative impact of accountability in the extractive sector on education at Nile University is a transformative impact of accountability in the extractive sector.
Muna explained that the video activities used to engage the students to spur their interest and get them involved in accountability process is a challenge adding that the project was implemented by Palladium with support from USAID.
“ The challenge is around developing audio-video content that will centre on transparency and accountability in the extractive sector, considering its social, environmental and economic implication that is created in a manner that will draw public interest and adequate government responses, that’s basically what we intend to achieve through this campaign”.
Also, the Program Coordinator for Social Development Integrated Centre, Social Action Nigeria, Bote Isaac stated that the engagement with students is borne the need to have a sector that works for all and meet the aspiration of Nigerians.
“It is also because this is a sector that we solely depend on as a nation for generating revenue for foreign earnings and even for driving governance process, governance is about service delivery and the resources to deliver such service is gotten from this sector, so to what extent are we utilizing this to better the lot of the people”.
Isaac noted that the outreach seek to address the issue of capital flight, corruption and unveil the movers and shakers in the extractive sector and see how the students can hold them accountable such that whosoever has the responsibility of doing something does that especially making sure that revenue is properly utilized and remittances are made at the right time.
Also, Programme Manager, CISLAC, Transparency International Nigeria, Chinedu Bassey stated outreach aims at sending the message of advocating for an effective and efficient use of resources accrued from the extractive (oil and gas) sector.
Explaining, Bassey said, “We know that in as much as the students might not understand the development angle of it, we have the duty to imbibe this into their subconscious to start understanding how the use of the resources that comes from this sector even affects their educational sector and also in the long run, what happens to them after graduation and join the labor market”.
