Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, Executive Director, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), specialises on issues relating to capacity building support to Legislators, civil society organisations, CSOs/NGOs and the media on legislative proceedings based on many years of extensive professional experience.

Rafsanjani, in an interview with Sylvester Enoghase, Senior Correspondent, after a Capacity Building Workshop on the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) for legislators and legislative staff in Cross River and Akwa Ibom States Houses of Assembly with the support of Oxfam Novib, held at Axari Hotel, Calabar, insists that training the state legislators on NEITI is important so that they can work closely with civil society to track extractive revenues and expenditures, promote and sustain fiscal discipline, improve the efficient allocation of public resources and stimulate efficient public finance management. To this end, a Civil Society Desk should be set up in both Houses of Assembly.

He maintains that Civil society, legislature and the media should campaign seriously for a moratorium to be placed on the further exploitation of new oil and gas resources to provide room for environmental remediation and the reconciliation of years of opaque transactions in the sector. Excerpts:

The capacity Building Workshop on the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) for legislators and legislative staff in Cross River and Akwa Ibom States Houses of Assembly have unearthed some challenging factor in the oil and gas industry. What is the driving force for this project?

I think I should start by highlighting the genesis of the project. What actually led to the training workshop was to train the legislature in general, and the state legislature in particular, because they have crucial roles to play in the promotion of extractive revenue transparency given that the NEITI is an Act of Legislature and considering the roles of the legislature in lawmaking, representation and exercise of oversight function on the executive and other development stakeholders.

We are working with our partner organization, Oxfam Novib, and with this project, we felt it was good for us to carry out the training because the 2005 NEITI Audit reveals that the actual payments and receipts by companies and government agencies respectively as well as the volume of extraction and reserves are still shrouded in secrecy and/or misinformation.

It might interest you to know that while President Olusegun Obasanjo was at the launch of NEITI in February 20, 2004, he set up a National Stakeholders Working Group (NSWG) made up of 28 individuals from; Civil Society (2); Media (1); Government (14); Indigenous and Multi-National companies (3); the Organised Private Sector (4); National Assembly (2) and State's (Regional) Houses of Assembly (2), as the platform through which the Federal Government would implement the global initiative, the aim at following due process and achieving transparency in payments by Extractive Industries (EI) companies to governments would fail if direct funding of NEITI from the Federation Account is not sustained by the government.

And the NSWG was mandated to achieve amongst others an independent Audit of Nigeria's EI Oil & Gas in the first instance as well as codification of reports to ensure independent annual audits in subsequent years beyond the present administration and assume oversight function. The essence of the capacity building is an important strategy for promoting the role of the legislature and other stakeholders in the promotion of revenue transparency.

This is because of the alienation of state and local governments, which are closest to the people. However, the discourse on extractive transparency has tended to undermine the role of these tiers of governments in making resource revenues work for the people.

The training is timely because of the fact that the environmental and social costs of oil resource extraction over the past 50 years far outweigh the benefits Nigeria has derived from the sector. It was also noted that corporate social investments in communities of operation, which are calculated as part of cost or payments by oil majors are actually a ruse as most of such investments are actually paid for by the NNPC as part of Joint Venture Operations.

Why is this training workshop tied to audited report of NEITI?

I said earlier that we are driving a project in the area of capacity building and budget analysis for legislators in audited report of NEITI. To start with, one will like to find out the interest of ordinary Nigerians in the NEITI, because this organisation has its activities tied to the area where the bulk of the nation's resources come into the Federal Government's purse.

This is because if we are able to effectively advocate and monitor what is going on in the industry, we will be able to block a lot of leakages in the financial gains coming into the country. We are going to have additional revenue generated for the Federal Government, which can be ploughed back into the budget.

I believe when there is enough resources available to the Federal Government, the life of the ordinary Nigerian can be improved through welfare programme.

We believe that the NEITI issue is very crucial because if the revenue generated is properly monitored and well used for welfare projects, the life of Nigerians will be improved.

It is our believe that when the legislators are trained on the activities associated with NEITI, they will be able to ask relevant questions, monitor revenue inflow and how the money is expended, and this will ensure transparency and accountability in the system.

Could you highlight the activities of CISLAC in the last few years on the crusade for transparency and accountability?

The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) was established to bridge the gap between the legislature and the electorate by enhancing lobbying strategies; engagement of bills before their passage into law; enhance the manpower development for lawmakers, legislative aides, politicians and the civil society, as well as civic education on the tenets of democracy.

We are worried that the executive arm of government has in the past eight years continued with the unwholesome tactics of diverting the attention of our legislators from focusing on the Bills and issues that would ensure good governance in Nigeria. This was being demonstrated through the controversial illegal third term or tenure elongation bill.

We believe that the National Assembly remains the heart of democratic process anywhere in the world and Nigeria in particular and therefore should continue to provide leadership in terms of formulating laws that would create an enabling environment for transparency and accountability in Nigeria.

CISLAC ventured into this legislative reform by engaging stakeholders on the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) Bill 2006, which encouraged Nigeria to embrace the global version of the EITI law, through openness and disclosure in the revenue of extractive activities in Nigeria and to reverse the negative tendencies inherent in the oil and solid mineral sector of the economy.

The creation of a Civil Society Organisation Liaison Office (CSOLO) under the office of the Deputy Clerk to the National Assembly facilitated works of CSOs at the National Assembly in engaging lawmakers on issues of National interest. This has fostered a genuine democratic governance of the country.

The assiduous efforts of CISLAC in mobilising public opinion in support of the Acts in conjunction with other civil society organisations made it possible for the eventual passage and signing of the Public Procurement and the NEITI Acts by President Umaru Yar'Adua. I strongly believe that the implementations of NEITI Law would transform the economy of the country.

We also felt that it is unacceptable that government still incurs the scale of revenue losses indicated in the 2005 Audit due mainly to lack of analytical capacity, poor technical competence, dearth or inadequacy of enabling laws and poor synergy between and within government agencies and covered entities.