It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to this press conference. This event, as you know, was convened to present to the public the reports of the 2013 oil & gas and solid minerals audits, commissioned by NEITI. Going by the standards of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), the 2013 reports should have been released latest by December 2015. NEITI was set to meet this deadline, as it had always done since 2004 when Nigeria signed on to the global initiative for promoting transparency and accountability in the management of revenues from the extractive sector. But you will all recall that the boards of all government agencies were dissolved on 16 July 2015. Even when the commissioned auditors were done with their work, the reports could not be released until reviewed and approved by the National Stakeholders Working Group (NSWG), which is the board of NEITI.
