NEITI wants action on remediation issues from audit report
News & Trends •
by edith ike-eboh6 if we have been implementing recommendations of auditors some of the corruption issues in the sector could have been reduced he said. nan1 neiti executive secretary mr waziri adio made the call in abuja at a national conference on remedial issues with the theme resolving remedial issues in the neiti report1 he named some of the unresolved remediation issues are cash call expenditure domestic crude allocation and management unlimited crude oil lifting by npdc and incomplete reporting by cbn1 others he said include undisclosed education tax liability inadequate measurement infrastructure in oil and gas industry unreconciled subsidy payments among others1 he said that it was unfortunate that most of the issues raised through the various reports of neiti had never been addressed adding that the inter-ministerial task team imtt had not functioned effectively1 this is because most people sent to represent some of the agencies indicted by some of reports are jurnior workers that may not be able to say anything about their organisation1 unfortunately there is nothing in the neiti act that allows it to punish those who do not undertake the right things1 the nigeria extractive industry transparency initiative neiti on monday called for urgent action on some of the remediation issues identified in its audit reports on the industry to ensure value on investment1 he said that there was the need for high profile people to attend the imtt to enable it tackle some of the remediation issues1 adio suggested that political authorities should invest energy to strengthen the imtt because they were key for results to be achieved1 for instance if the office of the vice president calls for a meeting and all stakeholders involved in the issues are invited and are asked to give a feedback they will respond quickly1 remedial issues is too big to be left for neiti because it has no powers he said1 also mr kolawole banwo chairperson civil society steering committee on neiti board said that said that much time was vested in discussing remediation issues other than action taken1 he said that government must demonstrate commitment on how to deal with the issues to ensure value for money spent1 for instance neiti cannot punish nigerian national petroleum corporationnnpc department of petroleum resources or other organizations indicted by the report he said1