NEITI Recovers N69bn Underpayments from Oil Coys

Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has disclosed that about N69billion have been recovered from operators of the petroleum industry following its audit of the sector from 1999 to 2008.

Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, executive secretary of NEITI, who stated this in Abuja while reviewing the activities of the organization this year, said three circles audit reports on the sector have been published.

These reports, she explained, showed that the government has through the Federation Account received a total of $209billion (N4.19tr) as revenue from oil and gas sector from 1999 t0 2008.

She said: “The three circle of audit also revealed a total loss of $2.6b been the difference recorded through leakages between what companies reported that they paid and what government reported it received.

“NEITI working with the relevant agencies have taken measures to recover this amount. For instance, the recoveries from underpayaments by the covered entities amounting to $80,740,000 from 1999-2004; for 2005 audit the sum of $90,907,000 was recovered; and from 2006-2008 audits the sum of $207,984,622 have so far been recovered based on findings our audits respectively.

“In 2013, NEITI will take all necessary measures to recover all outstanding cases working with relevant agencies”, she added.

Ahmed however lamented that paucity of funds is hampering the capacity of the organisation to conduct future audits as its budgetary allocations continue to dwindle each passing year.

In a related development, the National Coordinator of Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Nigeria, Faith Nwadishi,  has raised an alarm over the poor budgetary allocation to NEITI for the implementation of its activities.

Nwadishi, who spoke to reporters in Abuja,  disclosed that Nigeria’s audit of extractive industries was the most expensive in the world and pointed out that government has consistently slashed the funding of NEITI over the last three years.

A trend she said was a threat to ensuring transparency and accountability in the extractive industry.

“Government has consistently slashed the funding of NEITI over the last three years now and if we don’t stop this decrease in NEITI’s funding we may stop seeing these kinds of revelations”, she said.

Nwadishi, who represents the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) on the NEITI board, said Nigeria set for itself goals higher than the dictates of the global Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) which the country signed up to in 2003, adding that now the international community expects Nigeria to meet those goals.

“Nigeria is the first, if not the only, country that conducts a comprehensive audit in the extractive sector. It has also been recorded and stated as a fact that the audit conducted by NEITI is the most expensive in the world. That is because three components of the audits done in Nigeria is not done anywhere else in the world. In the financial reconciliation audit, Nigeria went two steps above what the EITI demands”, she explained