By Obiabin Onukwugha
The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), has called on the Federal government of Nigeria to impose sanctions on companies flouting environmental standard laws in the country.
The call is part of recommendation contained in the latest oil and gas report released by the body, recently.
According to the report, only 50 out of 121 companies (41.32%) fully complied with environmental standards, indicating low overall compliance with environmental laws and regulations by most companies.
NEITI called on relevant environmental agencies such as the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA) to be alive in their responsibility by imposing sanctions and fines on defaulting companies in line with the Harmful Waste Act, 2004.
The report read in part: “NEITI recommends that the relevant agency of government (i.e., NESREA) should take strict actions by imposing sanctions on all non-compliant companies.
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“Additionally, it should provide a list of all non-compliant companies to the MMSD for further disciplinary measures, such as license suspension or revocation, fines, and possible imprisonment as per the Harmful Waste Act, 2004.”
The report also revealed that despite the N200billion naira sunk into rehabilitation, none of Nigeria’s refinery was operational between 2020 and 2021.
It said: “The NEITI report also observed that none of the refineries was operational in 2021 despite spending about N200billion between 2020 and 2021 on refinery rehabilitation which was deducted from the Federation sales proceeds. These deductions the report reiterated, remains a heavy cost to Federation Revenue remittances.”
On Emerging Issues, the report recommended that the federal government should collaborate with relevant stakeholders to ensure that the Energy Transition Plan (ETP) is consciously implemented with the Energy Transition Minerals such as Cobalt, Lithium, Nickel, Copper, Graphite and Titanium beneficiated to increase revenue to government coffers and create employment opportunities for the teeming youths.
The NEITI report also stressed on the need for Nigeria to shift attention from oil to the development of the solid minerals sector in the face of dwindling oil revenue. It noted that there have been significant reforms and development in the sector especially the deployment of technology and innovation, which is the Mining Cadastre Office (MCO) Electronic Mining Cadastre System (eMC+), a title Administration and Management System to ease mineral title administration; the Nigerian Geological Survey Agency (NGSA) technology for Geo-referencing and Geo-coding of Topographic Maps of Nigeria for integration into the Mining Cadastre Digital Database and the NGSA Z-300 LIBS Analyzer of mineral samples and exploration activities among other laudable initiatives.
“The NSWG is a mandatory requirement for any country’s membership of the 57-member international organisation. NEITI hereby renews its appeal to the government to put the NSWG in place in other to fix the gap in the its operations due to the peculiar nature of the agency”, the report further read.
NEITI, therefore, reminded its stakeholders at the release of the report that it neither generates data nor manufactures information, adding that the reports being released was based on information and data mandatorily but voluntarily provided to the agency by relevant government agencies and companies covered by the NEITI process who also signed-off the final report as required by the NEITI process.
