By Anayo Okoli
Umuahia- Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, NEITI, has called for effective partnership with Civil Society Organizations, CSOs, to combat bad governance in the country.

NEITI said civil society organizations are very vital for the enthronement of transparency and accountability in the extractive industry.

According to NEITI Chairman, Prof. Asisi Asobie and Executive Secretary, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, civil society groups hold the key to implementation of the NEITI Act of 2007. They said CSOs should partner NEITI in educating the public on the use of audit reports of the extractive industry to hold governments and companies accountable.

They spoke in Umuahia Abia State, during a two-day sensitization workshop for Civil Society Organizations in the South East zone on the roles of CSOs in helping NEITI to deliver on its objectives.

According to Asobie, NEITI would not succeed unless the public was enlightened on how to use audit reports of the organization to hold people in government accountable.

He disclosed that NEITI has conducted audit reports of the Oil and Gas industry in Nigeria from 1999 – 2004 and 2005 respectively, while the full audit report for 2006 – 2008 would soon be ready.

Asobie who spoke on “Implementing NEITI in Nigeria: Challenges, Constraints and Opportunities”, announced that NEITI would study these reports critically and use them as a working document in raising questions on how the resources from the oil and gas sector were being used to impact on the lives of the citizenry.

In an address, the executive director, Mrs Ahmed, who was represented by head of Communications, Mr. Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, explained that NEITI has the mandate of ensuring transparency and accountability in revenue flows accruing from the extractive industry with the objective of ensuring that revenue from the industry were used to aid sustainable development in Nigeria.

“NEITI conducts audits to verify and reconcile revenue paid to government and what government actually received, disseminate the information with a view to providing the citizens the necessary tools to hold government and companies to account”, Ahmed explained.