31 May 2016, Abuja – The President of the Senate, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, on Tuesday said that the Senate would debate the 2013 Audit Report of the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) in view of the mind boggling revelations of mismanagement contained therein.
*Senator Abubakar Bukola Saraki.
Saraki, according to a statement in Abuja by his Chief Press Secretary, Sanni Onogu, disclosed this when the the Executive Secretary of NEITI, Waziri Adio led the management of the transparency body to present a copy of its 2013 Audit report to the Senate President.
He lauded the NEITI boss for the approach to formally present the report to the Senate apart from sending the report to the relevant committees.
Saraki said: “I agree with you entirely that this type of opportunity also enables us to strengthen the institutions such as yours that have the responsibility of improving the governance and transparency administration of the management of our resources.
“In preparation for this courtesy call, I studied the report in the early hours of this morning, and honestly I was just dumbfounded about the figures that we are talking about.
“This is just 2013, one year’s report. It is not cumulative. In one year’s audit report you are talking about figures of over $3.8billion at that time I am sure the rate was close to N150 per dollar. So you are talking about N650billion. Then you are talking about another N358billion which brings it close to about N1trillion”.
- Vanguard
