New NEITI board sets agenda for Nigeria’s resource governance

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The reconstituted board of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, has outlined its priorities, saying it would translate the implementation of the global Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, EITI principles into improved quality of life for Nigerians.

The chairman of the board, Kayode Fayemi, said at the inauguration of the reconstituted board in Abuja, that the transparency agency’s intervention in the extractive industries governance must help resolve some of the country’s key national development challenges.

Mr. Fayemi, who is also the minister of Solid Minerals Development, identified areas NEITI could impact to include ensuring that revenues from oil, gas and mining resulted in poverty reduction.

He said other areas are creation of jobs for the people; provision of security of lives and property; access to health care, education and social welfare as well as improved infrastructure.

Mr. Fayemi said Nigeria’s membership of the global EITI would have been meaningless without NEITI’s intervention in the extractive industry governance, leading to the realization of its goals.

The inauguration of the board preceded three-day induction programme for members of the board in Abuja.

The minister said the responsibility of the NEITI National Stakeholders Working Group was to develop and establish policy targets on how the implementation of NEITI Reports findings and recommendations could boost revenue generation.

He described the induction programme for members as a forum for strategic thinking and knowledge sharing on ways to efficiently address the identified challenges in line with the EITI and NEITI mandates.

Mr. Fayemi reaffirmed President Muhammadu Buhari’s commitment to “building better systems and procedures to strengthen the capacity of relevant government agencies to halt mismanagement, inefficiency, lack of transparency in the extractive sector as well as the diversification of the economy.”

In his remark, the executive secretary of NEITI, Waziri Adio, outlined key challenges facing the agency, namely implementation of remedial issues in successive NEITI reports, human capacity development for the multi-stakeholders, and the alignment of NEITI-EITI principles to government economic reform programmes.