Adio Bows Out as NEITI Executive Secretary

The Executive Secretary of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Mr Waziri Adio, will tomorrow (Thursday) bow out as the head of the organisation, having completed his five-year non-renewable term.

In a series of tweets on his Twitter handle, Adio , a journalist, noted that in his five years as the chief executive of NEITI, he had been able to record some significant achievements.

He listed some of them as making audit reports timelier and cheaper, reducing report publication time from 29 months to 15 months, releasing 59 per cent of the total of industry audits so far and reducing cost of industry audits by 50 per cent.

Adio added that himself and his team were also able to introduce NEITI policy brief, release 32 distinct publications in five years and undertake financial modeling, which contributed to the amendment of the PSC Act, projected to bring in additional $1.4 billion revenue per annum.

The outgoing NEITI boss further said that under him, the organisation achieved satisfactory progress in EITI validation, which is the highest level obtainable, only recorded by just 14 per cent of the 55 EITI countries.

In addition, he stated that the NEITI dashboard portal was launched, while the beneficial ownership register was unveiled.

Adio said that NEITI automated its data gathering component of its reporting process, deployed NEITI Freedom of Information Portal and succeeded in nudging the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to embrace more transparency.

The NEITI under him, he said, also initiated compliance ranking which increased full compliance with audit data submitted by 215 per cent.

He said: “My 5-year, non-renewable tenure as the Executive Secretary of @nigeriaeiti ends in exactly two days. Grateful for the opportunity to serve and to learn. And mighty proud of the few key things the NEITI team has achieved under my watch, some listed below.

“We set out to push the envelope on extractive sector transparency. As I set to depart, I can proudly say NEITI did move the needle: from adding policy as a new layer of work, through clearing report backlog, saving cost and time, doing more with less, to leveraging technology.”

He said that all the achievements were possible because of the heavy lifting by the team, the guidance of the board, provision by the federal government and its several local and international partners.