By Joyce Remi-Babayeju
ABUJA (SundiataPost) – The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, CISLAC, has commended the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, for its success in finally conducting an audit report of the corporation the first in 40 years of the corporation’s existence on transparency, accountability and inclusion.
Executive Director of CISLAC, Auwal Ibrahim Musa (Rafsanjani) said that the NNPC audit report is a step in the right direction towards promoting transparency and accountability in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector, and a repositioning of the sector as the nation’s foremost foreign exchange earner for improved development.
In an emotive mood Auwal said, “successive governments and leadership of the NNPC had come out with several commitments, vows, promises, even policies on how the magic will be done in the operations of the corporation but till date, none have availed to anything tangible. All we see is a bad to worse situation both in the structure of the operations and the accountability issues associated with the operations of the Corporation.”
CISLAC also called on President Muhammadu Buhari as the substantive Minister of Petroleum Resources to give an account of his stewardship in the petroleum industry since his resumption in power till date.
We call on the National Assembly to summon the leadership of the Corporation to a public hearing on this report. There is need for the responsible personnel to answer to this level of mismanagement and also allow the public to interrogate them on all that has been going on in the system for this long, Awual said.
He said that lack of transparency in the oil and gas sector is responsible for the hemorrhage on revenue flows and oil production that have earned Nigeria’s oil sector a not-too-favorable reputation both locally and internationally.
“Over the years, there have been several reports on activities of the Corporation – including commissioned inquiries, audits and investigations that have stressed transparency and accountability as crucial elements behind the inefficiency and corruption in the Corporation.
“This current audit report that was released recently by the Corporation has shown how much the country has been losing through some very obvious inefficient practices as seen in the reports.”
Meanwhile CISLAC has urged the National Assembly to speed up efforts in passing the Petroleum Industry Bill in order to curb all these waste in the sector, adding that till date there is no proper law governing the oil and gas sector of the nation.
“We call on the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation to maintain a routine of this audit yearly as this will go a long way to assuage the yearnings of the citizens over the years for a proper restructuring of the oil and gas sector in Nigeria.”
The CSO noted that the resources contained in the report would go a long way in lifting the majority of Nigerians out of penury if properly harnessed.
It called on stakeholders to always demand for transparency and accountability in the oil and gas sector.