The Nigerian Extractive Industries
Transparency Initiative, NEITI, yesterday, lamented that the true owners of
some oil blocs and other oil and gas assets in Nigeria cannot be identified
from the records of the Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC.
It also accused owners of some of
the assets of suppressing certain information and manipulating their records in
the CAC, making it impossible to link them with the assets.
According to Orji, the issue of beneficial ownership as
contained in EITI’s standards, requires the identity of the true owners of oil blocs,
adding that records of the companies in the CAC are shrouded in secrecy and do
not provide correct information about the true owners.
He stated that this had
been a challenge in implementing this specific requirement of EITI, while he
appealed to EITI to understand the peculiarities in the Nigerian environment.
He said: “Beneficial ownership requires us to explain or provide information on
the owners of certain oil blocs.
But Nigeria is one kind of country; that is
why I say nobody is going to suspend us; when you think we are going down, we
tend to rise up and surpass expectations.
“One challenge is that we try to
reflect this issue of beneficial ownership in our report, but the CAC is where
you register legitimate companies doing business in Nigeria.
If you go to CAC,
the information that you find have no relationship with what you know. That is,
those you know are the owners of this oil blocs.
Reinfeldt lauds NEITI In his
remark, Reinfeldt, the incoming chair of EITI commended NEITI for its efforts at
entrenching transparency in the extraction industry, adding that with some of
its policy recommendations to the Federal Government, NEITI had been able to go
further in its activities.
Speaking in the same vein, Deputy Head and Regional
Director for Africa and Middle East of EITI, Mr. Eddie Rich, stated that the
global body understood the challenges confronting NEITI, with regards to the
reports.
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