Impressed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)’s regular publication of its financial reports, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) has urged other public companies to emulate the transparent corporate culture of the state-run oil company.
“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,” the Executive Director of EITI, Mr Mark Robinson, said on Monday.
He spoke 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.
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.
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.
He said Nigeria is 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.
The Executive Secretary of NEITI, Mr Adio, commended 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, said the corporation was the only entity in the entire world that publishes its financial and operations report on a-month-by-month basis and urged 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 will 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,” Kyari said in a statement by Mr Samson Makoji, NNPC Acting Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs.
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 names of the companies which won the bid for the next 12 months have been published.
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, he said.
Kyari restated that the NNPC and Nigeria were poised to ensuring transparency and accountability in the Oil and Gas Industry as pioneer members of EITI,.
“President Muhammadu Buhari is steering the nation on this globally accepted norms.”
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