EITI Seeks Partnership With NNPC
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is seeking partnership with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the director of EITI, Mark Robinson, said on Monday in Abuja.
“NNPC is well placed as a transparent company to promote EITI’s new standards of beneficial ownership, commodity trading transparency and contract transparency, all of which the NNPC GMD is strongly committed to bringing to reality,” Mr Robinson said.
He said he was hopeful that NNPC would build on the commendable accountability culture.
He advised the corporation to share its experience with other state owned and private oil companies.
EITI is a global standard for the good governance of oil, gas and mineral resources. It seeks to address the key governance issues in the extractive sectors.
The EITI director called on the NNPC “to enlist into the EITI family as a supporting company along with the other 60 companies that are already members of the global transparency body.
He said Nigeria was one of the most important members of EITI since 2004 which has led to shared insights, partnerships and knowledge.
Also, he said, NNPC is one of the global leaders in terms of publication of its accounts and data.
He challenged other companies to emulate the excellent transparent corporate culture of the company.
Meanwhile, NNPC Group Managing Director, Mele Kyari, noted the corporation was the only entity “in the entire world that publishes its financial and operations report on a-month-by-month basis” and sued for other companies to emulate the NNPC’s example.
He said the setting up of the NEITI, NNPC Remediation Joint Committee was a welcome development.
He said the committee would help to further bolster the transparency trajectory of the corporation.
“Our commitment to accountability and transparency is not just to EITI and global companies but also to the real shareholders of the corporation,” he said.
“The over 200 million Nigerians are the owners of this company. Our priority is to be accountable to the Nigerian people who have the right to know what we are doing and doing it in the right way and to report correctly to them. I believe that the EITI processes are helping us to become more accountable to our shareholders,” Mr Kyari said.
DSDP
The NNPC helmsman revealed that Direct Sale Direct Purchase (DSDP) programme of the corporation was a clear demonstration of its commitment to transparent contract processes, adding that all the companies who won the bid for the next 12 months have had their names published.
He said for the beneficial-ownership standard of the EITI to be effective, “there was need for the initiative to engage the international banks, trading companies and all the other stakeholders of the business to display the owners of some of the companies.”
Mr Kyari said NNPC and Nigeria were poised to ensuring transparency and accountability in the oil and gas industry as pioneer members of EITI.
