The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) and the Tertiary Education Trust Fund-TETFund have committed to strengthen their partnership on accessibility to credible data, tax compliance and revenue disclosures.
The Executive Secretaries of NEITI and TETFund, Dr Orji Ogbonnaya Orji and Arc. Sonny Echeono made the commitment when the Management of TETFund paid a courtesy visit to the NEITI House, Abuja.
The two bosses also committed to manpower training and development, public finance management and educational financing for their staff and other critical stakeholders on transparency and natural resource governance.
NEITI Executive Secretary, Dr. Orji Ogbonnaya Orji while receiving his guests emphasised the need for stronger collaboration between NEITI and TETFund to ensure that funds meant for development of tertiary education in Nigeria and overall national development from the extractive sector were efficiently and transparently managed.
Dr. Orji stated, “Over the years, NEITI has closely monitored revenues accruing from the oil, gas, and mining sectors, particularly the Education Tax, which forms a major component of TETFund’s financial inflows”.
He pointed out that “NEITI has noted with significant concerns the remittances of the funds by liable operating entities, as well as the prudent and accountable management of the revenues to achieve intended purposes”.
Through closer cooperation, Dr Orji affirmed that NEITI and TETFund would ensure prompt remittances of Education Tax; promote prudent utilisation of funds, and encourage data sharing and joint research.
He assures that, NEITI would continue to track payments from oil and gas companies, to ensure the correct taxes were remitted as and when due, in line with the provisions of the Companies Income Tax Act (CITA).
Adding that, NEITI would support TETFund in identifying and addressing gaps in compliance by extractive sector players, pointing out that by leveraging its expertise in financial auditing and revenue tracking, it would enhance accountability in the disbursement and utilization of Education Tax funds.
Accountability in the use of these funds, Orji said, “Would build public confidence in the tax system and ensure that tertiary institutions received adequate funding for infrastructure, research, and human capital development.
Dr. Orji disclosed that over N3.8 trillion Naira accrued to the Tertiary Education Trust Fund-TETFUND between 2013 and 2023. A breakdown of the last two years accruals as revealed in the latest reports of the NEITI industry audits of the oil, gas and mining sectors for 2023 showed that accruals to the Fund were N229.34Billion in 2022 and N564.65 billion in 2023 respectively.
He commended TETFund for its visibility in the provision of infrastructure and research and development support to tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
According to Dr. Orji, “To enhance decision-making, policy formulation, and resource allocation to critical educational needs, partnership and technical support from TETFund to complete the NEITI Data Centre and Library would be a strategic investment”.
When completed, Orji said the NEITI Data Centre would serve as a comprehensive repository for information on Nigeria’s oil, gas, and solid minerals industries, including all NEITI Annual Industry Reports from 1999 to date.
The Centre, he added, would provide aggregated and disaggregated data formats for easy access by stakeholders, including civil society, media, extractive industry companies, government agencies, and the legislature; offer data analysis services and training in data science to promote knowledge and innovation driven by research, while complying with the Open Data policy requirements under the EITI 2023 Standard.
Adding that, the Centre would provide secure and efficient data management, to enhance dissemination and engagement within the extractive industry as well as facilitate informed public debate and contribute to national planning and development through reliable data.
On the status of the construction of the Centre, the NEITI Executive Secretary said the hardware infrastructure was completed since August last year, noting that, the next phase of the project would be to design and develop suitable software applications to support data security, storage, content management systems, data collection, cleaning, integration, analysis and training. He urged TETFund to provide a Special Intervention to NEITI to complete the final phase of the Data Centre and Library project.
The Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono stated that the Tertiary Education Trust Fund was at NEITI House to seek collaboration with NEITI in the areas of access to data on what is accruable to TETFund, tax compliance by extractive companies to ensure that they pay what they ought to pay; Revenue transparency on reporting to ensure that there are no gaps between companies payment and their disclosures to FIRS.
These pieces of information will enable TETFund expand their support for infrastructural development of tertiary institutions in Nigeria. Arc. Echono explained that TETFund has enormous confidence in the credibility of NEITI data and availability capabilities which his agency finds quite useful in its revenues generation drive.
“We need NEITI to support TETFund with Data, information and training on public finance management”. The Executive Secretary, expressed the commitment of TETFund to forge closer partnerships and cooperation with NEITI for the benefit of tertiary education in Nigeria.
A joint initiative to train TETFund stakeholders, tertiary institutions, and key policymakers on transparency, accountability, and public finance management principles in line with global best practices was agreed upon. Also, NEITI and TETFund will collaborate on the dissemination and engagement efforts with stakeholders especially the academia for in-depth analysis on the NEITI reports, the extractive revenue flows and the correlation to eradicating poverty and institutionalising sustainability practices in our socio-economic environment.
The TETFund Executive Secretary was accompanied on the visit to the NEITI House by the Directors and other Management Staff of TETFund.
