NEITI, EFCC, NFIU Move to Unravel Owners of Oil Assets

By Emmanuel Addeh

Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) said yesterday that it was working with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) and other anti-graft agencies to unravel the real owners of assets in the oil and gas industry.

Coming under the beneficial ownership principle, the collaboration, it said, would make public the identities of persons or entities who bid for, operate or invest in extractive assets and their level of ownership and details of how ownership or control is exerted.

The move is coming against the backdrop of insinuations that many people or companies whose names are registered as owners and controllers of Nigeria’s extractive industries are fronting for some highly placed persons.

NEITI stated that the development will advance the frontiers of transparency in the strategic sector and limit corruption, abuse of office, improve government revenues, citizen welfare and national security as well as levelling the playing field and reducing reputational risks for businesses.

Speaking in Abuja at a two-day capacity building workshop for journalists, NEITI’s Director of Communications and Advocacy, Ms. Obiageli Onuorah, stated that the development recently led to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the EFCC as well as forging a closer collaboration with the NFIU to track the accounts that receive the profits from such businesses.

She added that the work is being made easier since no transaction exceeding $50,000 can be done without the full knowledge of the NFIU, which has been cooperative in operationalising the beneficial ownership standard.

She said: “We really want to know who the real beneficial owners of Nigeria’s extractive assets are and that’s why we are working with the NFIU because there’s no transaction more than $50,000 that doesn’t go through them. And they have this network of relationships with other such units in other countries.

“They share information. So, even if the payment went to jurisdiction in the United Kingdom, for example, they have a way of tracking them because there’s a process the transactions must go through and we are able to track who the real owners are.”

She added that if a person is a director in a company and yet revenues from transactions do not go to his or her bank accounts, but pass through the banking system to another person’s account, then it raises suspicion.

According to NEITI, although hidden ownership of extractive assets is not always illegal and not always designed for sinister purposes, more often than not, anonymous ownership masks abuse of office and conflict of interests and enables tax evasion, illicit financial flows, money laundering, drug and terrorism financing.

Corporate anonymity, the agency said, impeded economic growth, noting that the NEITI is more interested in being proactive in stopping corruption, rather than “catching” the culprits when the deed is done.

Onuorah stated that the agency was also working with the auditor general to strengthen its processes in the agency’s fight against graft.

Earlier, the Executive Secretary, NEITI, Dr. Ogbonnaya Orji, stated that the training became necessary considering the strategic importance of the media to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) implementation process as well as its crucial roles in the ongoing reforms in Nigeria’s oil, gas and mining sectors.

According to him, it behoves on the media to drive the reforms that are crucial to the survival of the Nigerian extractive sector, particularly now when Nigerians and the world await the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) into law.

Orji stated that the global EITI has now revised its standards and expanded implementation to cover emerging issues – beneficial ownership, contract transparency as well as gender and environmental reporting.

He said under his leadership, NEITI had resolved to prioritise the need to link the agency’s regular extractive industry audit reports to visible results and impacts.

“This will be done by working closely with relevant government agencies that have responsibility for the implementation of the recommendations and remedial issues highlighted in our industry audit reports. NEITI believes that this will ultimately lead to improvements in the lives of Nigerians,” he said.