Nigeria can save over $200 billion yearly just by plugging all holes through which oil is stolen in the country, according to the Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA Resource Centre), an anti-corruption group.
HEDA stated this at the end of a week-long international conference on anti-corruption held in Abuja.
But to do this, HEDA said the government needs to work with all stakeholders, from the media to security agencies, community-based organisations and anti-graft groups, adding that funds recovered through stringent anti-corruption measures in the oil and gas sector would help pull the country back from economic doldrums.
“Nigeria is at a critical moment. People are passing through very difficult times. With a debt profile of N77 trillion, an extremely poor debt service ratio, the country is in a quagmire,” HEDA said.
“The surest way to recovery is to decisively fight corruption. Recovery of stolen funds and an end to graft in the oil sector will see Nigeria witness upsurge in revenue to meet the needs of Nigerians who are at the end of the stick,” it said.
The group said corruption is linked with poverty, violence and all sorts of extremism and that a sustained culture of corruption is a threat to democracy.
HEDA said it has for close to two decades led a campaign for accountability and transparency across all sectors in Nigeria to the admiration of many institutions and peoples across the world.
One of the participants at the conference, human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, drew the attention of the Nigerian authorities to the fact that billions of dollars are lost to various rogue cartels in the oil and gas industry.
Falana said that some $62 billion were outstanding royalties which the oil companies have failed to pay to the government in the last 18 years.
HEDA said it regretted that only 16 out of some 36 oil terminals in Nigeria are metered, making it difficult to monitor oil and gas production and distribution at local and international markets.
Also speaking at the conference in Abuja, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, Mr. Gbenga Komolafe, said that Nigeria has acquired a new technology that would effectively monitor oil production, distribution and exportation making it difficult to steal the country’s main revenue source.
Komolafe said the Nigerian Government is now at a vantage position to prevent oil and gas theft and is better prepared to put the country on the path to full economic recovery. He said the acquisition of the anti-theft equipment was the first in the country’s history.
