NRGI Regional Extractive Industries Knowledge Hub Alumni Stories: Transforming Extractive Industries for Development in Nigeria
Most of Nigeria’s revenue comes from the oil and gas sector. The Public and Private Development Centre, which Seember Nyager leads, aims to monitor how this revenue is generated and how the government spends it. What the money is being used for and whether it is being utilized for the public good are her organization’s main concerns.
PPDC works mainly around procurement governance, the process through which public contracts are awarded. PPDC expanded its monitoring activities to public institutions in the oil and gas sector with the support of the World Bank civil society fund. This came after 2012 protests against the removal of Nigeria’s fuel subsidies. At the time, there was very little information provided by public institutions working in the sector.
 Name: Role: CEO at the Public Private Development Centre Course attended: Anglophone Africa Regional Hub Course, 2013 |
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Nigeria is Africa's largest oil exporter, and the world's 10th- largest oil producer, accounting for more than 2.2 million barrels a day in 2011. Oil revenues totaled USD 50.3 billion in 2011 and generated 70 percent of government revenues. Nigeria's hydrocarbons sector is at a crossroads as the current administration attempts to pass the controversial Petroleum Industry Bill.* *http://resourcegovernance.org/our-work/country/nigeria |
Nyager attended NRGI’s Ghana regional hub training in 2013. As hub participants have diverse backgrounds and hail from different Anglophone Africa countries, she learned how oil and gas processes are being managed outside of Nigeria.
The training helped her understand how oil and gas contracts are entered into and how these contracts affect the governance of natural resources.
Since attending the course, Seember and PPDC have continued working to improve oversight of procurement processes. In 2015, PPDC commenced advocacy for adoption of the Open Contracting Data Standards (OCDS). At this year’s landmark Anti-Corruption Summit in London, the Nigerian government adopted this standard and said it would apply it to oil and gas processes.
As an organization, PPDC also realized it needed to make available procurement information more useable. It set up Budeshi, a platform that demonstrates how data around public procurement can be made more coherent using the OCDS.
“We need to link things together across the different stages of the procurement process in order for them to make sense to people,” Nyager said.
The Anglophone Africa Regional Extractive Industries Knowledge Hub is intended to build capacity to shape oil, gas and mining governance in the region. For more information on hub offerings, visit the hub page on NRGI’s website. The regional hub is one of six NRGI has created in partnership with academic institutions to offer training and support for civil society organizations, members of parliament and journalists in Anglophone Africa, Francophone Africa, Asia-Pacific, Eurasia, Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa. Learn more here.