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Nigeria: Group Asks Yar'Adua to Appoint Petroleum Minister
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Daily Trust (Abuja)
25 December 2007
Posted to the web 27 December 2007
Atika Balal
Abuja
The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) has called on President Umaru Yar'adua to appoint a Minister of Petroleum Resources.
In a statement signed by the group's Executive Director, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, the group also urged the president to open the petroleum sector to parliamentary oversight and public scrutiny to ensure transparency and accountability in the oil and gas sector.
According to the statement, the call was made at the weekend in Kaduna during a two-day training workshop for civil society organizations on their oversight role as part of efforts to enhance the industry's revenue and expenditure transparency.
Participants called on the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency over the incapacity of its agencies charged with regulating and monitoring the extractive industry.
They also called on the government to work towards taking control of the complex processes involved in the country's extractive industry so that it can assert its sovereignty.
"Most Nigerians do not understand the issues around the extractive industry, especially the operations of the oil, gas and mining companies and the returns to government accounts.
"In determining how much oil and gas is produced and exported, the country depends on oil companies for records. This situation has not allowed Nigeria to have full control of developments in the oil, gas and mining sectors or derive maximum benefits from the sector. On the other hand the present situation where the president is holding tight to the petroleum ministry can not be justified because even under the military regime, the ministry had a minister. The office of the Attorney General of the Federation should be empowered to closely monitor revenues from the sector to ensure that Nigeria gets all the revenue due to it as provided by law," the statement.
They added that the government should stop wastage of revenue and put an end to the corruption in the exportation and importation of domestic oil by reviving the all of the country's refineries.
"The collapse of the refineries has compounded the crises of accountability and transparency in the oil and gas sector as oil reserved for the refineries are being exported by the NNPC in a rather un-transparent fashion. The non-functioning of the refineries has also brought about Refinery Down-Time costing about $120 million per annum, which ran into $1.56 billion between 1994 and 2007," they said.
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Participants at the workshop include Oxfam GB Nigeria, representatives from Publish What You Pay (PWYP), NEITI and PACT Nigeria.
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