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Nigeria has started
the process of meeting the April 2011 extended deadline for her
validation as an Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI)
compliant country.

Nigeria was among
the four EITI candidate countries denied membership by the validation
committee of the international transparency body during its board
meeting in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, last month. The others were
Cameroon, Kyrgyzstan, and Gabon.

Though Nigeria was
adjudged by the board to be “close to compliant”, the country was given
a six-month extension period to take steps to remedy its status, latest
by April 2011.

The steps include
the conclusion and dissemination of its ongoing 2006-2008 audit report
in the oil and gas sector; development of a board charter to strengthen
the work of the National Stakeholders Working Group (NSWG); ensuring
that all government disclosures are based on audited accounts of oil,
gas, and mining companies, as well as relevant government agencies.

Determined to meet
the deadline, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative
(NEITI) hosted a workshop in Abuja on the ‘Standard Data Request
Template’ to facilitate the collection and collation of the information
and data to be used in producing the make-up EITI audit report.

Assisi Asobie,
NEITI chairman, who underlined the importance of the template as a key
tool for disclosure, said that the capacity of any EITI implementing
country to produce regular and timely reports is dependent on the
nature of the template used.

The Nigeria
Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) is the Nigerian
subset of a global initiative aimed at following due process and
achieving transparency in payments by Extractive Industry (EI)
companies to governments and government-linked entities.

Required data for template

He added that the
oil and gas companies would be expected to provide, among other
information, data on payments made to different government departments
by payment types, accompanied with auditors’ issued statements on
quality of data, duly signed off on accuracy by a competent senior
official; as well as detailed reconcilers in the form of receipts and
bank statements.

Similarly, the
NEITI boss said government would be required to gather and make
available reconcilers and auditors’ statements on data from all its
ministries, departments, and agencies which receive revenues from
operating companies.

Besides, government
is expected to issue statements, duly signed off by its senior
officials, on the quality of data provided by MDAs, while data are to
be provided in a company-by-company, payment-type by payment-type
format, with receipts and bank statements as reconcilers, where date do
not match up with those provided by the companies.

Civil society’s role

On their part,
civil society organisations, which have already been furnished with the
electronic copies of the template for the 2006-2008 oil and gas
industry audits, are expected to be fully engaged in the process by
making their inputs to the template structure, design, and
administration; as well as help persuade oil and gas companies and
governments to respond by providing the required information and data.

Though there are
other disclosures and reporting activities recognised by the global
EITI, Mr. Asobie said other core requirements include revenue
allocation to subnational levels, communities; calculations of what
companies pay against what they should pay; and transparency of
licences or other contract terms.