The Executive Secretary, Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, has said that the agency's comprehensive audit report of the solid mineral sector covering the period between 2007 and 2010 will be ready by end of this year.
The secretary said that the audit was prompted by an earlier study of the solid mineral sector by NEITI. She said that the comprehensive audit was coming at a time when majority of Nigerians viewed the extractive sector, especially oil and gas industry, with suspicion and distrust. “The audit would be completed by the close of 2012,” she said.
She told members of the National Assembly at an induction workshop for the legislature on the implementation of extractive industries transparency initiative in Nigeria that the report would go a long way to open up massive private investment in the solid mineral sub-sector.
She said there was need for members of the legislature to support NEITI to achieve its mandate as stipulated in the NEITI Act of 2007, stressing; “Since Nigeria signed up to the global EITI in 2003 and began the implementation in 2004, the role of the legislature in the process has remained one of the missing links”.