Stakeholders in the oil, gas and mining sectors will converge to dialogue on the recent audit reports released by Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) tomorrow in Abuja .
According to NEITI, its decision to convene the dialogue is to afford key players in the sector such as the government, companies, the civil society, the media, policy makers, legislature and covered entities to discuss the issues raised by the 2013 audit reports.
It further said the decision was within the context of increasing public demands for effective use of the information and data to hold government and companies accountable.
It said: “The need for the reports to serve as tools for urgent reforms and diversification of the economy to create jobs and empower the citizens will also be canvassed at the event.”
It also informed that the dialogue would be in two major sessions, with the first session to be moderated by a former member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yusuf Tuggar, who would examine critical issues arising from the report, while the last session would focus on moving from recommendations to reforms.
It added that a development expert, Patrick Okigbo, would moderate the second session.
“The dialogue is expected to come out with a strategic plan for effective implementation of the report.”
It will be recalled that the recent NEITI reports disclosed that Nigeria earned over $58 Billion from oil and gas and about N34Billion in the solid minerals sector in 2013.
The reports also found that revenues from oil and gas declined by 8% when compared with $62.9 billion earned in 2012, while earnings from solid minerals increased by 7% when placed side by side with N31.4 billion realised in the same sector in 2012.
The report further disclosed that for oil and gas, the total crude production and lifting from all sources during the period under review stood at over 800 million barrels.
Other pieces of information put in the public domain about that sector include the total revenue losses to the Federation and outstanding revenues from NNPC and its subsidiaries totaling over $3Billion etc.
The reports also showed the losses incurred due to offshore processing arrangements, crude oil theft valued at about $6 billion.
The reports also drew the public attention to divestments or transfers of the Federation equity holdings in OMLs by the NNPC to its subsidiary, the NPDC at a sum of $1.8 billion out of which only $100 million was paid.
