Several billions of naira in oil revenue and crude oil production are daily finding their way into private pockets and fat bank accounts, thanks to fraud in data collection and the festering underwriting of Nigeria’s oil production quota. World Economic and Stock Market reports that are regularly reeled out on the media, always provide an estimated rather than the exact quantity of oil produced in Nigeria. What then happen to the marginal quantity left behind in the calculation?
Unfortunately, answers to the question on how much crude oil, Nigeria produces daily, the true value of our oil export as well as the exchange rate regime used in calculating the value of crude oil produced or exported from Nigeria which is supposed to be provided by Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI), are difficult to come by as the agency is slow in carrying out its mandate, since its establishment in 2004.
Haruna Yunusa Sa’eed. Executive secretary of NEITI, in an interview, with Nigerian Newsworld, absolved the agency of non performance, insisting that by carrying out an audit report on the activities in the oil sub sector of the extractive industry, they have succeeded in highlighting basic short comings and lapses in the oil and gas sub sector. According to him “Issues of determining the actual production, metering and the inability to determine the actual production lapses, incurred at the point of production are fundamental areas that are usually brought to the fore by the Audit Reports. Oil watchers in the industry, insist that by the strength of their mandate, NEITI should go beyond foisting audited reports and ensuring that identified lapses such as determining exact production volume, accurate metering, as well as remittance of collected revenue, rather than its current grandstanding on the fraud currently plaguing Nigeria’s oil production . For instance the issue of poor metering by DPR where there are obvious lapses in determining or calculating the exact royalty to be paid ought to be taken up and enforced.
