Stakeholders at the public presentation of a book on marginal fields allocation have called for openness, transparency and accountability in the process.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the book is the fruit of an investigation into marginal field allocation processes, carried out by the Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA Resource Centre).
Speaking at the presentation of the book titled “Marginal Fields Allocation, Regulators’ Independence and Environmental Injustice: Paradox of Beneficial Ownership and the Host Communities,” on Wednesday – yesterday, March 12 -in Lagos, Chairman, HEDA Resource Centre, Mr Lanre Suraju, urged openness and accountability in marginal oil field allocation processes.
“We really want to see how accountability will lead us to transparency, good governance and service delivery to people,” Suraju said, noting that it is important to ascertain the character of persons and companies that operate within the oil sector before any form of accountability.
He noted that beyond the economic importance of oil exploration, there are also the environmental and community implications of operations in the oil and gas sector.
“Nigeria is said to be the most polluted place in the world, especially in the Niger Delta where oil companies exist.
“With the recent marginal oil field allocations and processes, HEDA has decided, with our partners, to review what transpired in the allocations of those licences and its implications for the organisations.
“We find that out of about 38 of them, 18 of them were not registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission, and many of them were not even filing out their annual returns.
“And the companies without adequate registration and recognition were found to be awarded contracts,” Suraju said.
The HEDA chairman said the interesting and sad aspect was that the process actually started with the defunct Department of Petroleum Resources.
He explained that the development took place before the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) that eventually brought about the Nigerian Upstream Regulatory Commission (NUPRC).
“We expected that the NUPRC would further do due diligence in determining the character and status of these companies before the allocations.
“We charge the CAC, the NUPRC and the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), to collaborate to charge the companies on the need to declare the beneficial owners of these companies.
“If they were not registered, how do they file returns?
“It means Nigeria has lost huge amounts of resources to these companies with major operations within the oil and gas sector of the country,” Suraju said.
To address the environmental injustice to the Niger Delta people, civil society organisations, the media and the diplomatic community need to come together to help the Niger Delta.
“Before we ever allow them to divest and move away from Nigeria, they actually must clean the mess and pollution in the communities where they operate and compensate them.
“At the same time, they need to pay the necessary dues under the PIA for their decommissioning and abandonment responsibility,” he said.
He urged the government to hold the multinationals accountable to the environmental degradation and pollution in the Niger Delta before they leave.
“People now become poorer because they cannot go to farm nor fish, the government needs to see it from this point of view,” Suraju said.
In his goodwill message, the Executive Secretary of NEITI, Dr Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, commended HEDA and its partners for their unwavering commitment to fostering transparency, accountability and justice within Nigeria’s oil and gas sector.
Orji said the findings from the book called for heightened scrutiny, transparency and accountability.
“It demands an unwavering commitment to ensuring that the processes are open, competitive and fair,” Orji said.
The book reviewer, Prof. Dayo Ayoade, Specialist in Energy, Extractives and Governance, said after almost six decades of the exploration of oil at Oloibiri, a proper clean up of the community was yet to be carried out.
“We all need to urge the government and the regulator to clean up the place so that the people can go back to their business,” Ayoade said. (NAN)
