A former Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Mr. Waziri Adio, yesterday challenged journalists to make more effort towards unravelling the ‘opacity’ in the extractive industry, especially the oil and gas sector.
He said there is a deliberate attempt by players in the industry to make the sector opaque so as to mismanage the resources that belong to over 200 m Nigerians.
Adio spoke in Abuja on Monday during a workshop on ‘Understanding and Investigating the Extractive Sector’ organised by the Daily Trust Foundation with the support of MacArthur Foundation.
Describing the oil and gas sector as the soul of the Nigerian economy accounting for more than 80 per cent of exports and the country’s foreign exchange, he stated that the sector has been very opaque and technical over the years.
He said it behoved on the journalists to put in more effort to understand the technicality of the sector and deepen reportage of issues in the sector.
“This is a sector that is very technical, a sector that is very opaque. What I want to say to you is that yes, it is very technical but it is not something that is beyond the grasp of anybody who makes the effort. There is a deliberate attempt to make it opaque.
“These resources belong to the Nigerian people. It doesn’t belong to the government or the oil companies. The government is holding the resources on behalf of the Nigerian people.
“This training is an opportunity to perform your job better as journalists. Any journalist that is properly trained can understand the sector.”
On his part, the acting Chief Executive Officer of Media Trust Limited, Malam Nura Daura, said the workshop was organised to enhance the capacity of journalists. That, he said, underscored the importance the foundation attaches to the sector.
The Editor-in-Chief/Executive Director of Daily Trust, Naziru Mikailu, charged the participants to internalize the knowledge that would be impacted on them in the four-day training.
He disclosed that Daily Trust as a media organisation has developed mechanisms to track the performance of people attending training.
