The Senate at its plenary on Wednesday 15th June, 2016 received the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Mr. Waziri Adio who had been invited to brief the hallowed chambers on its 2013 Oil, Gas and Minerals Audit Report. It would be recalled that the senate agreed to invite NEITI’s Executive Secretary on Thursday 2nd June, 2016 after a motion moved by Senator Tijani Kaura (APC:Zamfara) highlighted content in the aforementioned report which indicated that the sum of $12. 9 billion paid by the Nigerian Liquified Natural Gas (NLNG) to Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) between 2005-2013 was not remitted to the Federation account and that the country had lost between $5.966 billion and N20.4 billion in operations of Offshore Processing Agreements (OPA) by state oil firms, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), crude oil swap and theft.
Responding to these allegations, Mr. Adio admitted that the country had lost huge sums of money due to oil theft, vandalism and unremitted funds to the federation account. He however attributed some of the losses to the unavailability of data on Nigeria’s production of oil. In addition, he urged the Senate to consider the Petroleum Industry Governance Bill, 2016 as well as other legislations that would strengthen the legal framework and remove some of the identified anomalies in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry.
The platform also provided an opportunity for Senators to proffer recommendations from their analysis on the NEITI Report. For instance, Sen. Matthew Urhoghide (PDP:Edo) noted that the country had made no tangible investments in solid minerals and agriculture even as it looked at diversifying the economy. He also encouraged fellow senators to carry out oversight on ministries, departments and agencies after appropriation to prevent corruption. Sen. Nelson Asuquo Effiong (PDP:Akwa-Ibom) also suggested an amendment of the NEITI Act 2007, to enable NEITI mete out sanctions rather than being limited to publishing and disseminating reports. Sen. Gbenga Ashafa (APC:Lagos) and Sen. Abdullahi Adamu (APC:Nasarawa) also suggested that the report should be sent to an Ad-hoc committee to further analyze, scrutinize and make recommendation to the Senate. This view was also corroborated by the Senate President, Bukola Saraki (APC:Kwara) who stated that it was the Senate’s responsibility to study the loopholes in the oil, gas and mineral industry and come up with proactive legislation to address the lapses. An ad-hoc Committee was set up to examine the report and make recommendations to the senate in four weeks.
