 We're back with the breakfast of class CV Africa and of course our second major conversation this morning. We have Professor Kenneth Akinami, consultant standing by to the justice at the topic. Well, let's quickly inform you that the federal government of Nigeria has recovered a total of 2.6 trillion Naira in revenue from all firms in the country following the Niger extractive industries transparency initiative, national assembly intervention. On 80 set a total of 2.6 billion Naira dollars remain outstanding in the hands of companies as at March 2022. Dr. Oji O'Wanaya Oji, executive secretary of NAT, it said on Tuesday in Abuja added civil society organizations and media engagement on extractive industries transparent initiative validation. The AET validation, which is conducted every three years is a quality assurance mechanism to ascertain level of compliance and progress in implementing its standards among members or member countries, including Nigeria. Now, what does this involvement mean for the Nigerian economy? Professor Kenneth Akinami joins us now. Good morning to you, Prof. And thank you very much for your time. Oh, hi. Good morning. Thank you for having me. All right. The Nigerian extractive transparency initiative was really a big talking point and highlight when Madam New Process was in charge. It seems that we've not had too much about it since then. What are your thoughts on this new development of this NAT kicking in and recovering such amount of revenue in the hands of all companies? Well, you haven't heard, it's because of the cycle. It operates on a three-year cycle. It carries on its investment. For NAT, NAT is a Nigerian extractive industry transparency initiative. Nigeria joined that initiative, is a global initiative called extractive industry transparency initiative. So Nigeria joined. And what it does is that it carries on with its investigations of auditing and reporting and accounting and making sure that they are investigating every opaque transactions and deals. And then over a period of three years, and then when they now finish their work over three years, they would go for validation because you must give opportunity for the companies that you are claiming have infractions to come and defend themselves. So after that validation, then they will publish their report. And they had to see the assembly to explain to the assembly how they got to where they are. And then that's the further opportunity. So what happened was that in 2019, when they did the last publication, 77 oil companies and gas companies were owing the government $6.8 billion. And what then happened was that they, all these were from tax collections, from VAT collected by FIRS, from Royal Tees, paid by oil companies, which were being collected by the National Offstream Regulatory Agency, and all of this. So they were investigating now, you know, going through all their papers. And don't forget, one good thing though is that while they look at this end of the export of crude and whatever, they also get record of the destinations. Of this crude. So the records must match and quite often they don't. So what you declare here doesn't quite agree with what was received by the country. So that's one of the ways they're able to pick up these things from member states. So what then happened was that when they did their validation and then published their report, by the time they published their report, 77 companies that have been fractured have reduced immediately to 59 companies. And then the money that they were owing, which was $6.8 billion, quickly dropped to about $3.6 billion. And what was it? Nobody contested the report because they know that they were standing on facts. All that you had were excuses, all kinds of excuses on why the limiters were slowing, coming and all of that. But the whole thing about the native is that they want to enthrone a regime of transparency and have quality assurance mechanisms that enable them to monitor and get to so that people will be more accountable. And in that way, they can inform public debates on policy and strategies in the use and application of natural resources and mineral resources. So on this particular occasion, they are now going to do the report. They've done the report, which they are going to about to publish that having gone to validation. And what happens is that once they publish that report, they will hand over the case to FEFCC, and it will not be treated as economic crime. So that's why the monies are coming in right now. As you saw that as of March this year, 2022, they said that Nigeria is being owed $2.6 billion. And the federal government has recovered $2.6 trillion from those infractions. So that's where we are right now. But the next thing now is that they don't hand over this to the EFCC to pursue as an economic crime. Right, quite interesting. I was going to ask you how the native would go about getting these monies back. And you rightly said the three yearly audit report conducted and it's gone down from about $6.48 billion with about 77 oil firms down to just over 50 of them. How is it that this happens? Because as of last year, when there were discussions about the 2019-1980 audit report, some organizations, including civil society organizations, lamented that these remittances are from taxable in contrast to what we have as tax to poor Nigerians. And if we had some of these funds being owed to federal government paid or collected, the tax burden on the poorest of the poor by government in its drive to increase in tenant-generated revenue will not be that high. So how do we get to these points where with all the agencies of government and today we're talking about the implementation of the Iran-Sahya report and federal government at Thurand National Institution in Nihori to now finally reduce the number of ministries, departments and agencies because of dwindling revenue. That in the midst of all these things going on that with all the agencies, ministers and departments we have in the country, more than 500 of them, that companies are able to get away with owing such an amount of money to the government. Well, that's true, but the thing is that the method that they use in collecting the data is on a sale because if you join as a member state to the EITI, then they will cooperate with you. So in other words, if a company declared that the crew that they took away was two million barrels and then on the other end where it entered they saw that it was 2.5 million barrels, then a lot of things come out. That extra half a million barrels, you haven't paid tax on it, you haven't paid Rehat on it, you haven't paid VAT on whatever needs to be paid. So that's how, you know, that's one of the ways in which they pick. So they audit the books here and they find discrepancies. They go to auditors' reports and see what the auditors have already identified. They look at primary source of information on transactions and that. So they get all that and then they collaborate them with the destination and country. So there's also no question about that because they can't dispute. Some of them may be minded to, but the fact is that they haven't come to dispute those figures. The second question that arises is what are the punitive measures? You know, if we don't have punitive measures, they will continue to reoccur. So I think we may have to go back to the law, to the act, setting them up, and then see whether we need to tighten up. And we have the same case with the fiscal responsibility act 2007 that was very, very soft on penalties. Now they have re-jigged it and it is absolutely tough on penalties. If you are found to infract, you will be going to jail on pay one million Naira for each offense and whoever collaborated with you is going in with you. So those kinds of draconian legislation need to be passed so that you can punish people who... But there should also be areas because that's another thing because the FIRS, they want you, they are found culpable. Then they continue to... the penalties go on for the same percentage. So you should be recovering a certain percentage of this money that has been... Assuming we had that money in the savings account and it's any loss in trust, then they have held it for three years. So you have to pay the interest on that money plus the penalty. Yes, Prof, I was going to say, you know, because with the mounting debt to countries is piling up, running a deficit budget as well, we don't know how we're going to get out of this trap. Isn't there wisdom? We have bodies like the Federal Internal Revenue Service that are going hard on private businesses with that money, oil and gas. They're going hard on them. Why do we have players in the oil and gas sector being able to get away with this for three years, four years, five years? Even till now, 50-something of them are still owing in a country of rules. They're not trying this in other countries. Is it a failure of the regulatory authorities like FIRS to really do their job in the sector, oil and gas sector? I don't know if we can even bring in the FOMA DPR, which is now NMDP RA. You know, just very quickly, please. Yeah, but the two things, one is plug in the leakage, two is what does the regulation allow you to take more, far more stringent actions? And if it does, then you come to the level of the individual that is supposed to apply the law, has it failed to apply the law? And then the other one is to get to the 90 side of the Act to see what could be done. So you've got the Act setting up FIRS and all of that and then the new one, anyway, the new body. So you have to look at both the Act and the operational competence of the individual and their willingness or lack of willingness to implement. So it's not one single answer that you're going to look across the value chain to see where we need to tighten the news and where the penalty will begin and where it will end. So that's not the one of answer. All right, all right. Indeed, you've given solutions to this, one of which is stringent penalties for those who are defaulting just as a deterrent to those who may want to withhold the nation's money in the future. Professor Ken, thank you very much. It's also a pleasure having you on the program. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, then that's the size of our package on the breakfast this morning. Don't forget, you can always follow us online across all social media platforms at Plus TV Africa, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to be precise. We're online at plustvafuka.com and of course on YouTube at Plus TV Africa and Plus TV Africa Lifestyle. My name is Kofi Battels. The program returns tomorrow. Good morning.