FG Moves to Accelerate Open Disclosure Of Nigeria’s Oil, Gas Assets’ Ownership
By: Emmanuel Adefeso ESQ
The federal government has officially launched the Opening Extractives Programme (OEP), a global five-year scheme to unveil the real owners of assets in Nigeria’s oil, gas and mining sectors. The initiative was introduced to accelerate progress of beneficial ownership transparency in selected resource-rich countries and to be jointly implemented by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and Open Ownership,
The Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, Dr. Zainab Ahmed, who delivered the keynote during the event organised by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) in Abuja, said it would help stem corruption and money laundering in the sectors. Ahmed explained that having been selected as one of the pilot countries for beneficial ownership, NEITI at the time developed the first set of templates used to gather information and data on who the real owners of Nigeria’s extractive assets were, but met with brick walls at every turn. With the launch of the programme, she stated that Nigeria has now fully institutionalized beneficial ownership reporting, thus moving away from the experimental stage and providing for sanctions for defaulters.
The Executive Secretary, NEITI, Dr. Ogbonnaya Orji, in his remarks, stressed that the programme was a global initiative to support national governments to deepen implementation of beneficial ownership transparency, saying that though its execution may be difficult, it was doable. According to him, secrecy in corporate ownership of assets in the extractive industries remained a clear danger to countries everywhere in the world. It creates a real and present danger to our collective development aspirations, especially in all developing countries. But what is most gratifying is that governments in developed and developing nations are coming together to strategise on how best to lift the veil of secrecy over the ownership of extractive assets in most of the resource-rich countries.
The initiative will go a long way in assuring all invaluable stakeholders of a transparent, cost efficient, safe, and sustainable framework, for the management of Nigeria’ hydrocarbon resources, in the best interest of the country, investors and in line with global best practice. The long term gain of this initiative are that citizens will be aware of who they are doing business with or competing against and will also encourage appropriate stakeholder engagement which is a part of Nigeria’s open government action plan. It is a step in the right direction for the implementation of global standards for the promotion of an open and accountable system in the management of extractive resources in Nigeria.
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