NEITI: TetFund Got N3.8 Trillion Accrual in 7 Years

•Forges ties on data access, tax compliance

Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja

The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), yesterday disclosed that the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETfund) received N3.8 trillion for its various interventions in the last seven years.

Executive Secretary of NEITI, Dr Ogbonnaya Orji, spoke in Abuja when the head of  TETfund, Sonny Echono, paid him a visit in his office, with a view to strengthening partnership on accessibility to credible data, tax compliance and revenue disclosures.  

Both organisations also committed to manpower training and development, public finance management and educational financing for their staff and other critical stakeholders on transparency and natural resource governance.

Orji underscored the need to ensure that funds meant for development of tertiary education in Nigeria and overall national development from the extractive sector were efficiently and transparently managed.

He assured that NEITI would continue to track payments from oil and gas companies, to ensure the correct taxes were remitted as and when due, in line with the provisions of the Companies Income Tax Act (CITA).

Also, he said NEITI would support TETfund in identifying and addressing gaps in compliance by extractive sector players, pointing out that by leveraging its expertise in financial auditing and revenue tracking, it would enhance accountability in the disbursement and utilisation of education tax funds.

Accountability in the use of these funds, Orji said, would build public confidence in the tax system and ensure that tertiary institutions receive adequate funding for infrastructure, research, and human capital development.

Orji disclosed that over N3.8 trillion accrued to TETfund between 2013 and 2023, noting that a breakdown of the last two years accruals revealed in the latest reports of the NEITI industry audits of the oil, gas and mining sectors for 2023 that accruals to the fund were N229.34 billion in 2022 and N564.65 billion in 2023 respectively.

“To enhance decision-making, policy formulation, and resource allocation to critical educational needs, partnership and technical support from TETFfund to complete the NEITI data centre and library would be a strategic investment,” Orji added.

When completed, Orji said the NEITI data centre would serve as a comprehensive repository for information on Nigeria’s oil, gas, and solid minerals industries, including all NEITI annual industry reports from 1999 to date.

The centre, he added, would provide aggregated and disaggregated data formats for easy access by stakeholders, including civil society, media, extractive industry companies, government agencies, and the legislature.

According to him, it will offer data analysis services and training in data science to promote knowledge and innovation driven by research, while complying with the open data policy requirements under the EITI 2023 standard.

The Executive Secretary of TETfund, Echono, in his remarks, stated that the organisation was at NEITI House to seek collaboration with NEITI in the areas of access to data, especially on what is accruable to TETFund.

He stated that there was the need for clarity on tax compliance by extractive companies to ensure that they pay what they ought to pay as well as revenue transparency on reporting to ensure that there are no gaps between companies’ payment and their disclosures to the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS).

These pieces of information, he said, will enable TETFfund expand its support for infrastructural development of tertiary institutions in Nigeria, explaining that the fund has  confidence in the credibility of NEITI data.

“We need NEITI to support TETfund with data, information and training on public finance management,” he noted.