Nigeria: Cislac Urges Youths to Pay Attention to Extractive Sector

15 December 2022
Leadership (Abuja)
By Hosea Yusuf

The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) has appealed to the Youths to engage themselves in creating awareness on how to invest more in extractive industries.

This according to CISLAC, will aid economic growth, oil and gas mining, which are important elements in promoting an environment conducive to the enjoyment of human rights.

The event was organised under the theme: "Transformative impact of accountability in the extractive sector on education".

It aims to mobilize, sensitize and stimulate young people across all high institutions to engage in conversations and advocacy towards deepening transparency and accountability in the extractive sector in Nigeria.

Briefing the newsmen in Abuja yesterday, programme coordinator, for Social Development Integrated Centre, Social Action Nigeria, Bote Isaac, stated that the engagement with students is borne out of the need to have a sector that works for all and meet the aspiration of Nigerians.

"This is a sector that we solely depend on as a nation for generating revenue for foreign earnings and even for driving governance process, governance is about service delivery and the resources to deliver such service is gotten from this sector, so to what extent are we utilizing this to better the lot of the people.

"We recognize that the youth are imperative in learning their voices to demanding an accountable extractive sector in Nigeria, it about their future and about how revenue processes impact on their lives, those are the things that inform the need to have all hands on deck and the generation that is affected foe all to speak with one voice to ensure that we have a sector that is transparent and accountable to meet the needs and aspirations of Nigerians."

He said, At the end of this project, we want to see them more knowledgeable on issues of the extractive sector to speak and open up conversations with other relevant stakeholders in the extractive sector and push for contract transparency, to see that the process of awarding and implementing contracts especially within the extractive sector is open and transparent."

However we want for address the issue of capital flight, corruption and unveil the movers and shakers in the extractive sector and see how we can hold them accountable such that whosoever has the responsibility of doing something does that especially making sure that revenue is properly utilized and remittances are made at the right time.

Meanwhile, program manager CISLAC Chinedu Bassey, said that the student outreach aims at sending the message of advocating for an effective and efficient use of resources accrued from the extractive (oil and gas) sector, we know that in as much as the students might not understand the development angle of it, we have the duty to imbibe this into their subconscious to start understanding how the use of the resources that comes from this sector even affects their educational sector and also in the long run, what happens to them after graduation and join the labor market.

"This campaign aim to ensure to that every penny counts in the extractive sector and campaign within the accountability and extractive sector cluster within the ambit of the scale project implementation with support from USAID and implemented by Palladium, and we are poise to reach to as many schools as possible especially tertiary institutions, this is the second and we intend to expand this to geographical spread of the country."

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Also speaking the Program officer CISLAC Muna Ugochukwu, said we are here on a student outreach on transformative impact of accountability in the extractive sector of education in Nigeria , hoping as one of the activities that we would use to engage students to spur their interest and get them involved in accountability process is a challenge and we are leaving it to them to decide the nature of the output.

Transformative impact of accountability in the extractive sector on education. The event seeks to mobilize, sensitize and stimulate young people to engage in conversations and advocacy towards deepening transparency and accountability in the extractive sector in Nigeria.

For the first engagement that we had in this outreach series, we met with the students of the Niger Delta Science School in Rivers State, I have to say that it was very impressive because it was just a pilot and at the end of that they went ahead to establish an extractive club of 39 members and also went ahead to produce 44 videos, so we are proud to be part of young people's development and interest in this conversation.

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