The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, seeks to achieve operational excellence in regulation and enforcement across the extractive industries in 2014

In a statement made available to Vanguard, NEITI stated that it would develop an effective comprehensive framework for the delivery of effective audit, continuous monitoring and evaluation, stronger regulation, enforcement and compliance management.

This work plan for next year may have been triggered off by the controversies that trailed the 2012 report, which questioned its veracity and the selection of two firms by NEITI to conduct the audit of the oil and gas as well as solid minerals industries.

Some civil society groups had accused the agency charged with the responsibility of promoting transparency and accountability in the country’s extractive industries of neglecting transparency in the selection process that threw up the two firms considered largely unknown.

Questions were also raised by civil society organizations against the experience and the technical capacity of the companies to handle a complex assignment as the audit of the country’s oil and gas industry and the solid minerals sector.

NEITI in its statement said it would develop a robust multi-stakeholder communication and mobilization strategy/framework for effective stakeholder relationship management, collaboration and cooperation.

According to the statement, “NEITI would develop organizational and funding capacity to achieve the NEITI mandate, vision and strategy.