By Abdallah el-Kurebe
The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) has lauded the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) as one of the global leaders in publication of its accounts and data.
A statement by the Acting Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division of the NNPC, Samson Makoji, also said EITI urged other companies to emulate the excellent transparent corporate culture of the corporation.
Executive Director of EITI, Mark Robinson, gave this endorsement when he paid a business visit to the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mallam Mele Kyari, along with the Executive Secretary of Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Mr. Waziri Adio and other top offivials of the Initiative at the NNPC Towers, Abuja Monday.
Robinson said he was hopeful that NNPC would build on the commendable accountability culture, even as he called on the corporation to share its experience with other state owned and private oil companies.
The EITI Executive 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.
“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,” Robinson informed.
He said Nigeria was one of the most important member of EITI since 2004 which has led to shared insights, partnerships and knowledge, describing the leadership of Mallam Kyari as very capable and credible.
Speaking in a similar vein, the Executive Secretary of NEITI, Mr. Adio, applauded Mallam Kyari for his commitment to transparent commodity trading, contract transparency and mainstreaming, stressing that the initiative was happy about the signals it was receiving from the NNPC.
On his part, NNPC GMD, Mallam Kyari, posited that 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, saying 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. 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,” Mallam Kyari enthused.
The NNPC helmsman stated that the 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 submitted that for the Beneficial-Ownership new 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.
Mallam Kyari stated that the NNPC and Nigeria were poised to ensuring transparency and accountability in the Oil and Gas Industry as pioneer members of EITI, saying President Muhammadu Buhari was steering the nation on this globally accepted norms.
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.
