ABUJA-President Umaru Yar’Adua yesterday challenged the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), to explore the possibility of monitoring oil stolen from conflict areas and laundered in the international market.
Yar’Adua made the challenge while opening the West Africa EITI Conference in Abuja.
He said the call became imperative, to promote the principles of honesty, transparency and accountability in international transactions.
‘’The Nigerian experience shows that there is a sense in which we can talk of Blood Oil,’’ he said.
He said already, Nigeria had taken steps to drum up effective support for the passage of a resolution, co-sponsored by Azerbaijan and 17 others at the UN, to promote the principles of honesty, transparency and accountability in international transactions.
Yar’Adua, represented by the Vice President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, advocated for the application of the Kimberly process to elements of extractive industries, other than diamonds.
The President expressed delight that Nigeria had attained the
status of one of the leading EITI-implementing countries in the world.
‘’The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative,
(NEITI), has succeeded in putting both the supervising government
agencies and oil companies on their toes and is ensuring that
transactions are done in line with due process,’’ he said.
He expressed the hope that within the year, Nigeria would formally pass the EITI Validation Test and move up to the status of a compliant country.
‘’Our administration’s inauguration of a 15-member National Stakeholders
Working Group (NSWG) in January 2008, and the approval, for the first time ever, of a budget for NEITI are indicative of our determination to fully support the work of the Initiative.’’
Yar’Adua stressed the need to strengthen the link between transparency, accountability and overall development.
He said mere implementation of EITI would not provide the omnibus solution to all the developmental challenges of a society.
“It must be stressed that desirable as it is, EITI is not a magic bullet. By the same token, EITI cannot be the stand-alone item on the agenda for development,” he said.
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