NNPC partners EITI to boost transparency, accountability

Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has partnered the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) supporting the company to boost transparency and accountability of the corporation.

NNPC is joining over 65 extractives companies, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), commodity traders, financial institutions and industry partners who commit to observing the EITI’s supporting company expectation.

EITI is a global standard for the good governance of oil, gas and mineral resources which seeks to address the key governance issues in the extractive sectors.

The EITI Board Chair, Rt Hon. Helen Clark, welcomed the company’s commitment to the EITI, stating that, “NNPC plays a vital role in Nigeria’s economy. Joining the EITI as a supporting company is a welcome step in the NNPC’s journey toward achieving greater transparency and to help ensure that Nigeria’s citizens benefit from their natural resource wealth.”

The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, and former EITI Board member, Zainab Ahmed also commented that “Increased transparency of Nigeria’s national oil company revenues is contributing to improvements in our country’s domestic resource mobilisation efforts.”

The state-owned company has recently taken measures to become more transparent. In June 2020, it published audited accounts for 20 of its subsidiaries. NNPC also published its monthly financial and operations report on its website, in national dailies and online media as part of efforts to be accountable.

It is working with Nigeria EITI (NEITI) on an action plan to routinely disclose information and it currently publishes some of the data required by the 2019 EITI Standard on its website.

NNPC is moving towards becoming an integrated energy company with an interest in power generation and transmission. These disclosures demonstrate NNPC’s commitment to its journey to becoming a more transparent national oil company.

Adherence to the EITI’s supporting company expectations, it will give further impetus to NNPC’s corporate vision of greater transparency and accountability. Three areas in which there is scope for advancing transparency are revenues and payments to the government, contracts governing petroleum exploration and production and consolidated group-level financial statements.

While affirming to this, the Group Managing Director at NNPC, Mele Kyari tweeted through his Twitter handle, stating that, “Today EITI International has announced the acceptance of NNPC as a partner company. This translates to a requirement for greater transparency and accountability from the Corporation. Our commitment aligns with the persuasions of our Government to be accountable to the populace.”

Executive Secretary of NEITI, Waziri Adio, commended NNPC’s move to support the EITI, “NNPC joining the EITI as a supporting company is a major inflexion point in the quest for transparency – for the company, for Nigeria’s oil and gas sector, and for the country as a whole. This is so given how critical NNPC is to the sector and to the country.

“NEITI welcomes this bold commitment. We will continue to work and walk with NNPC to translate its espoused commitments to transparency and accountability into concrete and sustained actions and results,” he added.

Becoming an EITI supporting company can help state-owned companies make progress on the journey to transparency. A recent example is Qatar Petroleum, which has been an EITI supporting company since October 2019 and has now published its annual and sustainability plans for the first time.