Claire, who is in Nigeria on a working visit, stated this during a press briefing in Abuja on Monday, stressing that the EITI cannot force sovereign governments to implement recommendations of audit reports or better use resources from the extractive industries.
The EITI Chair, who praised Nigeria’s strong commitment to EITI implementation, scored the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) high on its extractive sector audit reporting, adding, “I will be astonished if Nigeria were to lose its EITI membership because the commitment here is very high. I don’t see the prospect of signing off from EITI in Nigeria.”
She however noted that while NEITI has done well with its audit reporting, a lot still needed to be done by way of using information from the reports to push for reforms in the management of the country’s extractive sector resources to better the lives of the citizenry.
She said NEITI’s work has led to enormous openness in the sector adding that “now the next phase is to use the report to do an analysis that can demand for change.”
Speaking further she said: “Tracing where all the missing money is going to is very complicated and NEITI has done well in their analysis. But NEITI alone cannot transform Nigeria, it needs the civil society organisations, the media and every Nigerian to enforce the kind of reform that can lead to breakthroughs.
“If we are going to eliminate poverty from the world in 2030 then resources have got to be better used by governments. We are using our commitment to get countries to use the resources to make peoples’ lives better, but I can’t order governments,” she added.
In her remarks, the executive secretary of NEITI, Zainab Ahmed, said approval has been gotten from the presidency for the re-inauguration of the Inter-Ministerial Task Team (IMTT) which is tasked with implementing recommendations from NEITI audits.-Leadership
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