NEITI, NiDCOM Seek Gender Equity in Oil Sector

The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) and the Nigeria in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM) have agreed to establish an inter-agency cooperation to promote career advancement of women in the two organizations.

The Executive Secretary of NEITI, Dr. Ogbonnaya Orji and the Chairman of NiDCOM, Abike Dabiri-Erewa, stressed this in Abuja at this year's Women's Day celebration.

The inter-agency cooperation, NEITI said. will cover capacity building programmes, environmental, gender, social economic development challenges that frustrate women career advancement in public service.

In his opening speech, Orji described women's day as a very important annual event for NEITI to join the rest of the world to highlight, identify and celebrate the valued contributions of women to national development generally and the Extractive Industries in particular.

“It is a day to advocate for equity, inclusivity, gender justice, wider opportunities for women in the oil, gas and mining sectors in the areas of job opportunities, career advancement and security in work environment,” he said.

The NEITI Executive Secretary underlined that the global Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) standards particularly require implementing countries to promote greater diversity in decision making, document and publicly disclose women participation, gender, social, environmental issues in the extractive Industries.

The goal of EITI reports, he added, is to highlight the risks that women are confronted with in rural host communities where oil, gas and mining exploration activities take place, document such risks and the remedy required.

He lamented that information and data from NEITI industry reports on women participation in the extractive sector remain discouraging and far from the national average.

“For instance, the 2021 Oil and Gas Industry Report employment data from 56 out of 70 oil companies disclosed that out of 19,171 employees, 15,639 or 82 per cent are men while only 3,532 or 18 per cent of the employees are women.

“The disclosure is far from the national average of 35 per cent. From the same gender balance data, all top high level management positions in the industry are dominated by men,” he said.