Revenue Leakages: GIFT Nigeria tasks NASS on passage of FRA Amendment Bill
Revenue Leakages: GIFT Nigeria tasks NASS on passage of FRA Amendment Bill
Revenue Leakages: GIFT Nigeria tasks NASS on passage of FRA Amendment Bill
The Growth Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (Gift Nigeria) has tasked the 9th National Assembly to immediately pass the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) amendment bill.
The group’s Executive Director, Order Paper, Oke Epia, made this call on Friday in Abuja at a media briefing, saying that the financial crisis facing Nigeria was as a result of corruption in the oil sector, which could be resolved through the amendment of the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA).
According to him, the slow amendment of the FRA had given room for non-remittance of revenue by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) and other ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) of government.
Saying that Nigeria was losing about N2 trillion to non-remittances by MDAs, Mr Ekpia added that there were gaps within the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) that encourage it, which should be fixed.
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The Order Paper Executive Director stressed that though some parts of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) might seem convenient for now, they did not provide room for revenue remittances, noting that a key problem of the oil sector was that of lack of accountability.
On his part, the Executive Director, Hip City Innovation Centre, Bassey Bassey, lamented that despite being the host to the country’s oil resources, the people of the Niger Delta region were yet to benefit maximally from the resources.
He added that the GIFT Nigeria project also seeks to enlighten and engender interest among the Niger Delta people on the issue of development, emphasizing that the second phase of the project seeks to focus on providing relevant data that would enable citizens to ask questions and demand accountability from people in power.
The General Manager, Mega FM, Ejiro Umukoro, who also spoke at the event on funding for host communities within the Niger-Delta, charged host communities to get involved in tracking and monitoring the processes using tools, including the RemTrack provided by Order Paper.
GIFT Nigeria, a cluster of five organizations comprising Order Paper Nigeria, Centre for Transparency Advocacy, Hip City Innovative Centre, Clice Foundation and Nigeria Institute of Quantity Surveyors, is committed to advocating improvement in fiscal transparency and good governance in the nation’s petroleum sector.
Revenue Leakages: GIFT Nigeria tasks NASS on passage of FRA Amendment Bill
