25 November 2012, Sweetcrude, Abuja – The first solid minerals audit in Nigeria has been concluded and will be released next month, Executive Secretary of Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, Zainab S. Ahmed has said.
Speaking in Abuja, Ahmed said NEITI board will be looking at the report next week before releasing it to the public.
“We hope, all things being equal, the board will approve it, so that it will be released to the public by December,” she said.
She further said efforts were also on, to conclude the oil and gas audits from 2009-2011 before the end of December.
“On the oil and gas audit, we are putting efforts to see that by the end of the year it is also completed and released to the public,” she said.
NEITI awarded the contracts for the two audits on March 1 to Sada Idris & Co for oil and gas, and Haruna Yahaya & Co for solid minerals.
The two auditors, she disclosed, signed an agreement on February 22, to deliver the project within nine months, adding that the solid minerals sector audit is expected to establish tonnage, mined quarried minerals by major players, verify activities of entities in manufacturing and construction in the sector that derive their raw materials from mining and quarrying activities.
On the oil and gas sector, the auditors are expected to deliver on the financial flows, establish cash calls, signature bonuses, royalties, crude lifting, petroleum profits tax, levies and payments on oil subsidy during the period
under review among others.
On her expectations of the outcomes, Zainab said there are some issues that have been reported from the very first reports in 2004 that have not been corrected till today and they will feature again because they were not corrected.
She said: “As in figures, it will not be the same because the companies might be different and the process of oil and gas audit is still ongoing.
“I don’t have the benefits of the recommendations that are coming out yet, but we expect them to be similar and we expect some more, because the terms of reference are not exactly the same as the ones before”.
