The Nigeria Natural Resource Charter (NNRC) Launches the 2019 Benchmarking Exercise Report (BER), Holds a Policy Dialogue in Abuja, Nigeria: Thursday, 20 February, 2020
February 18, 2020
The Nigeria Natural Resource
Charter, a non-profit policy institute on natural resource governance launch its
flagship Benchmark Exercise Report (BER) in
Abuja on Thursday, 20th of February 2020 in Abuja. The Report
presents the biennial findings from an assessment of Nigeria’s petroleum sector
which covers from 2017 to 2019.
The BER which identifies petroleum sector progress and areas for
improvements empowers stakeholders to advocate for best practices within their
various spheres of work in the sector. It assesses Nigeria’s petroleum sector
against 12 Precepts to offer guidance on key decisions faced by the government,
beginning with whether to extract resources in the first place, and ending with
decisions that determine how generated revenue can produce maximum good for
citizens. The 2019 Report provides an update on the last two years of petroleum
sector governance, examined gaps in sector transparency and reported changes.
The dialogue will focus on its overarching precondition for effective
petroleum resource management; precept 1
determining whether Nigeria’s ‘strategy, legal and institutional framework
governing the petroleum sector ‘secures the greatest benefit for citizens
through and inclusive and comprehensive national strategy, clear legal
framework and competent institutions.’
According
to the Program Coordinator, Nigeria Natural Resource Charter (NNRC), “the release of the Report comes at an opportune time given
the recent reforms instituted by the government and the omnibus reform in the
form of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) being championed by the Ministry of
Petroleum Resources”. Adding that “the governance gaps have been well
articulated in the 2019 BER and we believe that if appropriately addressed in
the bill and subsequently implemented, Nigeria would have made appreciable
improvement captured with a ‘green’ in areas where it largely still remains at
a ‘red’. From the findings, there were marginal changes from the 2017 BER with
10 ‘ambers’ and 2 ‘reds’ being recorded. The ‘reds’ have persisted against
precept 5 and 6, the precepts that assesses the impacts of extraction on host
communities and the commercial effectiveness of the national oil company; NNPC.
The major focus of the dialogue
will be on those areas where there have not been any forms of improvement as
captured with ‘reds’, notably precepts 5 and 6 and the other two precepts that
will be affected when the PIB is passed; precepts 3 and 4. The four key
benchmarks Nigeria must attain and focus on as it targets reforms are the
Natural Resource Charter (NRC)’s precepts 3, 4, 5 and 6 consecutively which ask
pivotal questions on whether the government encourage efficient exploration
production operations, and allocate rights transparently’, ‘does the current
fiscal framework enable the government realize the full value of its resources
consistent with attracting necessary investment, and should be robust to
changing circumstances?’, ‘does the government pursue opportunities for local
benefits and account for, mitigate, and offset the environmental and social
costs of resource extraction projects?’ and ‘is the national oil company
accountable, with well-defined mandates and an objective of commercial
efficiency?.’
It is the NNRC’s belief that if
all these questions are adequately tackled, Nigeria has the potential to
compete more effectively globally and stands a chance of raising some of its
187 abjectly poor citizens out of poverty.
We hope to see these tenets guide
the government as it makes its decisions and pushes to reform the petroleum
sector to boost economic growth and wealth for the nation.
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For media enquiries, contact:
Anthony Ihianle
aihianle@nigerianrc.org
Kelechi Anyanwu
kelechideca@gmail.com
About the Nigeria Natural Resource Charter: The Nigeria Natural resource Charter (NNRC) is a non-profit policy
institute that implements the Natural Resource Charter (NRC), a set of
principles intended for use by governments, civil societies and the
international community to determine how best to manage natural resource wealth
for the benefit of current and future generations of citizens. It is led by an esteemed panel of experts on
natural resource governance that convenes on a biannual basis to analyse the
governance issues relating to the petroleum sector in the country.
