Fuel subsidy removal will address oil swap deals ― NEITI

The Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Dr Orji Ogbonnaya on Thursday said the full deregulation of the petroleum sector will permanently lay to rest the conversation around oil swaps.

He said this is one of the major issues that civil society should urgently target in their advocacies.

Ogbonnaya spoke at the Policy Dialogue on Oil Swap co-hosted by the NEITI and Policy Alert, an indigenous civil society organization, with support from the Opening Extractives.

Referring to the agency’s latest policy brief titled “The cost of fuel subsidy: A case for policy review, he said Nigeria expended over N13 trillion ($74 billion) on fuel subsidies between 2005 and 2021.

“The figure in relative terms is equivalent to Nigeria’s entire budget for health, education, agriculture, and defence in the last five years, and almost the capital expenditure for 10 years between 2011‑2020,” he said.

According to him, the Oil Swap Policy Dialogue is designed to provide stakeholders in the extractive industry a platform to share data and analytical insights on Nigeria’s crude swaps, identify gaps and weaknesses in the swap deals, and highlight corruption red flags or risk areas while initiating inter-agency collaboration on the use of beneficial ownership data between anti-corruption agencies and regulators.

“We also want to use this Dialogue to extract a commitment from state actors, especially Anti-Corruption Agencies (ACAs) to follow-up investigations on the crude swaps; strengthen partnerships with specific agencies for follow-on action and generate interest around the subject of crude swap deals among key stakeholders,” he added.

While also querying the status of the implementation of the Petroleum Industry Act, stating that the Act made copious provisions for the deregulation of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry.

He recalled that a Presidential Steering Committee on the implementation of the PIA was set up in 2021 to coordinate the implementation of the Act.

However, he said, “not much is in the public domain on the progress of the committee’s work,” urging civil society to step up advocacies for the conclusion of the committee’s work and submission of its report to the President before the expiration of the current administration.

Similarly, he disclosed that an update on the Glencore bribery scandal showed that the case is before the EFCC for further investigations and action.

The United States Department of Justice had disclosed that Glencore (One of Nigeria’s oil traders) had paid bribes in various sums, spanning over a decade to some Nigerian government officials at the NNPC to secure crude oil contracts and other business advantages.

He said, “through our mandate and our commitment, NEITI drew the attention of the federal government to the Glencore bribery scandal through the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.

“NEITI also while engaging on the issue drew the attention of civil society and the NNPC to their roles and demanded investigations into the Glencore bribery allegations and if confirmed prosecute offenders.”

To this end, he called on the EFCC to conclude investigations and prosecute culprits where they are found culpable.

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