Lack of transparency and accountability and weak enforcement of regulatory laws in the Nigerian extractive industry sector are undermining the sector and the nation’s economy, experts in the industry have said.
“Some violators are operating without licenses or local incorporation like Corporate Affairs Commission’s registration. This leads to tax evasion and revenue loss to the Nigerian government needed for socio-economic development,” Mr Lawal said. Furthermore, he called on the law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute oil companies violating the relevant regulatory laws in the oil sector.A lawyer, Nelson Olanipekun, in his presentation, said the sector lacks transparency and accountability.
“One of the ways to mitigate against the challenges in the extractive sector is section 94 of the CAMA which is the disclosure of Beneficial Ownership,” he said.Temitope Olaifa of the Department of Communication and General Studies, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, in her presentation, said there is gross neglect in the mining and fishery sectors with the government paying more attention to the oil and gas industry “which is not giving us the emancipation that we desire.
In 2014, 126 people were prosecuted, and 11 people were violators of the extractive laws, representing nine percent of the total number of people prosecuted. Mrs Olaifa said within the four years under review, 440 people were prosecuted, 24 of whom were violators of the laws of the extractive sector.“The violators of this sector go scot-free if they do not get apprehended. It means we are entrenching a culture of impunity in our system, and because we do that it may be difficult to bring sanity into the sector,” Mrs Olaifa noted.