The Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation on Monday said it would assist the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in tracking oil and gas revenue that accrue to the Federal Government.
It said the OAGF’s assistance to NEITI to track oil and gas revenue would ensure appropriate remittances.
The Accountant-General of the Federation, Ahmed Idris, stated this when he received the leadership of NEITI, led by the agency’s Executive Secretary Orji Ogbonnaya-Orji.
Idris made the promise while reacting to NEITI’s request for support to effect requisite reforms in the management of the country’s oil and gas revenues.
He was quoted in a statement issued in Abuja by his agency’s spokesperson, Henshaw Ogubike, as saying, “The federal treasury will partner and give the necessary support to NEITI to achieve efficient monitoring of oil and gas revenue accruals to the government.”
Idris said the effort of NEITI to entrench probity, transparency and accountability in the management of the country’s oil and gas revenue was in line with the government’s financial management reforms initiatives.
He also made a case for the integration of NEITI as an institutional partner in the Federal Government’s strategic revenue growth initiative.
He reasoned that integrating the agency into the Federal Government’s strategic revenue growth initiative would be a big leap forward in government’s vision of improving revenue collection, mobilisation and identifying additional sources of revenue.
Idris noted that operating under obsolete laws had greatly hampered the activities of the agency and called for periodic review of NEITI Act and other laws that regulate the operations of the oil and gas sector to reflect current realities.
In his remarks, the NEITI boss said his agency was established to track revenues accruing to the government from oil and gas transactions, especially remittances of such revenues to ensure accountability.
Ogbonnaya-Orji commended the accountant-general of the federation for the successes so far recorded in the government financial management reforms initiatives and solicited support for his agency’s activities and challenges.
