Follow Us on Google
From Uche Usim, Abuja
The Inter-Agency Task Team (IATT), comprising anti-corruption agencies under the Presidency, has described the annual loss of $4.2 billion worth of crude oil, which is never accounted for, as a totally unacceptable hemorrhage that should be stopped in the interest of the country.
To this end, it has called for the enforcement of stricter anti-corruption measures in all agencies of the government to enthrone transparency and accountability.
Speaking at a high-level seminar to mark the International Anti-Corruption Day 2021 in Abuja on Thursday, the Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) and a member of IATT, Dr Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, said it was his agency’s special report that revealed the annual $4.2 billion crude oil that is either lost or stolen every year.
According to him, these losses pose serious challenges to the government’s ability to deliver public goods and services to citizens.
“Particularly, secret ownership or exploitation of mineral resources undermines national security and poses an existential threat to the country.
“Nigeria, through NEITI, recognised very early the damage done to the economy by these practices. In December 2019, Nigeria became the first country in Africa to establish a publicly accessible register of beneficial owners, and the first globally to establish a register in the extractive sector. This ground-breaking achievement was made possible by the efforts of different stakeholders including some anti-corruption agencies, in a process facilitated by Nigeria’s EITI.
“Within the last one year, we have carried out a self assessment of the beneficial ownership register, under the oversight of the global EITI. The EITI’s review of this assessment showed that Nigeria has made “meaningful progress” in our implementation of the beneficial ownership register. This is the second highest performance rating in the global EITI ranking, and was achieved after barely one year since we commenced implementation of beneficial ownership disclosure in Nigeria.
Before the EITI validation of our Beneficial Ownership Disclosure, we have also facilitated a formal assessment by stakeholders.
