Senate Sets-up Ad Hoc Committee To Look Into The NEITI Report Findings

Today, in accordance with Section 4 (4) of the NEITI Act of 2007, the Senate considered the 2013 Audit Report of the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI).

This report, exposes discrepancies of billions of Naira in Nigeria’s extractive industries and also shows that several federal government assets were either significantly undervalued, or transferred with no proof of purchase made.

NEITI as an institution, is established to promote more transparency and accountability in the management of Nigeria’s oil, gas and mining revenues. In this regard, it is important to find out why nobody acted on this report for 3 years, and how $518million has been unaccounted for.

In this regard, the Senate has set-up an Ad Hoc Committee to look into the findings of the report, and to develop ways of ensuring that findings of irregularities in the oil, gas and mining sectors have agencies that are established by law to enforce findings of discrepancies.

As there have been no prosecution based on this report to date, moving forward, the Senate will task the executive branch to ensure the recovery of the unremitted funds; prosecute all those found culpable; and take new legislative action to strengthen NEITI to do more work in this direction.

We must continue to fight corruption by plugging leakages like this one that go unchecked, instead of paying “lip service” to this issue.

Finally, I must commend Mr. Adio and the entire leadership of NEITI on a job well done so far. They have done a commendable job of working for the accountability of the sectors under their purview.

As posted on facebook of President of the Senate.