The Executive Secretary, Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, Dr Ogbonnaya Orji, said on Friday that the reports of the agency between 1999 and 2004 facilitated the idea of enacting the Petroleum Industry Act.
The NEITI boss said this while defending his agency’s 2022 budget before the Senate Committee on Federal Character and Intergovernmental Affairs.
He said the idea of the bill to govern and regulate the oil and gas sector in curbing the wastages and corruption endemic in the sector came about from NEITI reports to that effect between 1999 and 2004.
The reports, he explained, exposed Nigeria being one of the few countries of the world rich in both oil and gas resources, but without required revenues from them and invariably foreign and local investments for the needed sustainable development.
He said, “It is gratifying today that an idea mooted through NEITI report for required laws to govern the oil and gas sector has come to fruition through the recently signed Petroleum Industry Act after many years of consideration as bill from the sixth to the present National Assembly.”
The NEITI boss was however taken up by members of the committee over the agency’s non-recruitment of workers since 2010.
Specifically, Chairman of the Committee, Senator Danjuma La’ah, queried the NEITI boss why the agency had not carried out recruitments over the years despite having only 56 staff.
Orji, in his response, said request for such exercise had been made to the appropriate authorities but that the required approval had not been given.
