The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has become an Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) partner company, joining a group of over 65 extractives companies, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), commodity traders, financial institutions and industry partners who commit to observing the EITI’s supporting company expectations.
The new status would require that NNPC inter alia publicly disclose taxes and payments.
EITI board chair Helen Clark welcomed the company’s commitment to the EITI.
“NNPC plays a vital role in Nigeria’s economy. Joining the EITI as a supporting company is a welcome step in the NNPC’s journey towards achieving greater transparency and to help ensure that Nigeria’s citizens benefit from their natural resource wealth,” she said.
Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning and former EITI board member Zainab Ahmed also stressed the importance of ensuring that natural resource wealth contributes to sustainable development.
“Increased transparency of Nigeria’s national oil company revenues is contributing to improvements in our country’s domestic resource mobilisation efforts,” she said.
Established in 1977, NNPC has grown to become the largest asset holder across Nigeria’s oil and gas industry value chain. Traditionally an oil and gas entity, it is transitioning towards becoming an integrated energy company with an interest in power generation and transmission.
The state-owned company has recently taken measures to become more transparent. In June 2020, it published audited account for 20 of its subsidiaries. NNPC also publishes its financial and operations report every month on its website, national dailies and online media to keep the public informed about its activities as part of efforts to be accountable to Nigerians. It is working with Nigeria EITI (NEITI) on an action plan to routinely disclose information and it currently publishes some of the data required by the 2019 EITI Standard on its website.
Group Managing Director of NNPC Mele Kyari affirmed the company’s commitment to the EITI.
He said: “Becoming an EITI supporting company aligns with NNPC’s corporate vision and principles of transparency, accountability and performance excellence. Our partnership with NEITI and EITI strengthens our commitment towards commodity trading transparency, contract transparency and systematic disclosure of revenues and payments. We are on a journey towards greater transparency and look forward to deepening our collaboration with the EITI to further this work.”
NEITI Executive Secretary Waziri Adio also commended NNPC’s move to support the EITI.
