The Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI has received the records of 198 companies in the mining and oil and gas sectors for auditing. This was disclosed by the Executive Secretary of NEITI, Dr Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, on Tuesday. He said the records contain the activities of the companies, which include government agencies.
Orji disclosed this in Abuja while addressing a meeting of leaders from civil society organisations involved in the extractive sector. He told them that volumes of information and data for the ongoing nationwide reconciliation and validation of revenues in the oil, gas, and mining industries have been submitted.
Orji said out of the 198 records submitted 63 are in the oil and gas industry, meeting the materiality threshold of a minimum royalty payment of five million dollars, while 135 companies are from the solid minerals industry meeting the materiality threshold of six million naira.
The NEITI boss added that the level of participation of extractive companies in the ongoing industry audit is higher than in the last exercise conducted in 2021, where 190 oil, gas, and mining companies were covered.
This shows that 121 were solid mineral companies and 69 oil and gas companies with a material threshold of $5m and N3m in royalty payments, respectively.
He further explained that the exercise covers the quantity of oil, gas, and mining produced, consumed, imported or exported, as well as the revenues earned and remitted to appropriate government coffers, and the relevant government agencies that collected or expended such revenues.
In his words “NEITI is also tracking how the processes undertaken during these transactions measured up to the standards of transparency and accountability in line with the global Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), of which Nigeria is a signatory and a founding member.”
