The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has unveiled a data “DashBoard’’ platform to simplify its audit reports and ensure informed knowledge for public debate on transparency and accountability in the nation’s extractive industries.
The NEITI’s dash board platform was developed as part of the implementation of the global Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) policy on open data.
The Executive Secretary of NEITI, Mr Waziri Adio said the dashboard highlights the spirit of innovation that the board and management of NEITI was known for.
“We believe in this mantra that you either innovate or you die, we also believe that we need to constantly use our vantage position in public service to expand and to create public value,’’ he said.
Adio said that the dashboard was to constantly push the boundaries and expand the frontiers of openness and accountability in the extractive industries.
According to him, the dashboard is designed to avail Nigerians who are owners of the natural resources simplified information on the workings of the sector.
“The extractive sector is the collective property of all Nigerians, as they do not only have the right to know, but to truly own the sector by having details of its operations.
“It is only those who know about it that can engage in the conversation, so our goal with this project is to foster inclusion and ownership by constantly demystifying this sector,’’ he added.
Adio said for EITI to archive its purpose of reducing poverty, promoting development and reversing resource cost, there was the need for robust public engagement and debate of the happenings in the sector.
“The change we want in the sector will come only when people intimately engage in the information we are pushing out.
“Through the debate about the best ways to use the resources for the development of the people, some form of pressures can be mounted on people who make decisions to allocate those resources to the benefit of the people.
“So public debate is very critical, but you can’t discuss and debate what you don’t know.
“That will not happen without data that is comprehensible and usable, how do you make the data usable and translate it to Nigeria,” he asked?.
He said the provision of a dashboard by NEITI would show the way for other EITI countries in the world to follow.
He urged media practitioners, civil society groups and Nigerians to make use of the dashboard on NEITI’s website to demand for accountability and transparency in the sector.