Relevant Strengths:

Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) are products of collaborative efforts of global Civil Society Organisations to improve transparencyand accountability on natural resource governance in line with General Business Principles on revenuegeneration, remittances to government and revenueallocation to subnational government. The intent is to block revenue leakage and improve societal growth.

This path led to NEITI Act, 2007 that clearly mandated NEITI to develop a framework for transparent and accountable reporting and disclosure of all revenue dueto or paid to the Federal Government by all companies in the extractive industry. The Act empowered NEITI toevaluate federal government investment profile in the extractive industry, contractual obligations, processes and practices on acreages acquisition, budgeting, procurement, production cost profile, sales profile, all remittances to federal government, institutional capacity gaps and remedies, and all fiscal allocation and statutory disbursements due to or paid to statutory recipient from federal government. NEITI is expected to disseminate findings to the public and develop programmes to shrink corruption in natural resource governance in Nigeria.

This context requires someone with in-depthadministrative, financial, program management, and monitoring & evaluation skills to pragmatically influence and steer other board members/actors to deliver concrete results that align with its mandate.Being on the board of NEITI will give me opportunity to redirect the team to a more result-orientated approach that will encourage the donor community to fund CSOs to socially mobilize the public on NEITI findings,directly engage with violating companies in Nigeria and engage with international pressure group to jointly hold defaulting and corrupt companies / individuals accountable to ensure best practices in the industry. As highlighted above, I possess these strengths and have evidently used them to advance the course of development in extractive sector for more than 20 years.  As the Head of Administration / Finance of Centre for Social Corporate Responsibility, I represented my organisation in 2004 the HeryBoing/Publish What You Pay- Nigeria nation-wide mobilization of public and institutional voice in Port Harcourt. Since then, I have resolutely remained with Publish What You Pay – Nigeria and influenced all other NGOs that I worked with to become member of the coalition. I have been an active member of PWYP at state, zonal and national levels – I served in 2 State and 2 zonal ELECO, 2 national ELECO, 2 fundraising, 1 Project Review Committee and participated in several meetings and trainings.

I was a Budget Officer in Nigerian Building and Road Research Institute (1997 – 1998); an Accountant inNigerian Building, Road, Engineering and Maintenance Technology (1998 – 2002); a Budget Monitor Officer in Centre for Social and Corporate Responsibility (CSCR)from 2002 to 2003; the Head of Administration and Finance in CSCR (2003 – 2007); the Director of Administration and Finance in Trans Boarder Missionary Initiative (TMII) from 2007 to 2010; the Policy Officer/Accountant in Gas Alert for Sustainable Initiative (GASIN) from 2012 to 2013;  the head of Finance in GASIN (2013 – 2015); the Monitoring &Evaluation Manager in GASIN (2015 – 2016); the Managing Consultant of Centre for Institutional Support (2016 – 2018). Presently, I am the Executive Director of Stakeholders Alliance for Corporate Accountability (SACA), Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Nigeria. I am currently overseeing SACA-Nigeria Agip Oil Company (NAOC) 3-Year project on United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Other key partners on the project include Bayelsa State Ministry of Environment, Bayelsa State Ministry of Health, Bayelsa State Ministry of Education, Bayelsa State Ministry of Agriculture, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), National Human Rights Commission, National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency, and the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corp. He is a co-chair of the Project’s Steering Committee with NOAC’s GMD.

I served as Financial Secretary of Rivers State Child Protection Network (CPN) from 2010 – 2021. CPN is a body that UNICEF instituted across the 36 States of Nigeria. I have supported over 22 Civil Society Organisations in Nigeria to raise over N1Billion for development work, financial management, strategic planning and monitoring & evaluation. I have evaluated over 10 projects for donor agencies in the extractive sector. I jointly consulted for United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and facilitated the costing of National Strategy to Combat Wildlife and Forest Crime in Nigeria (2022 – 2026).

Over the years, I have engaged Shell Petroleum Development Company in Nigeria and UK; Chevron in Nigeria; NOAC in Nigeria and Eni in Milan to improve their corporate social responsibility and best practices in environmental care.

I got B.Sc. Accounting from Edo State University, Ekpoma in 1995. I was trained on fundraising and NGO Accounting by Catholic Relief Services in 2000; trained on Devinfo 6.0 Data Admin, Devinfo 6.0 User interface, Rapid Assessment and Data Analysis, and Monitoring and Documentation by UNICEF in 2012. Same year, I was trained on Grant, Finance and Administration, and Project Monitoring and Evaluationby USAID/Pact Nigeria. I got certificates on Emerging Practices in Development Evaluation; National Evaluation Capacity Development for Country–Led Monitoring and Evaluation; and Equity-Focused Evaluation from Claremont Graduate University from 2012 to 2013. In 2016, he got a certificate on Result-Based Monitoring and Evaluation from West African Civil Society Institute, Ghana.

I have several other certificate, participated in short courses and trainings in extractive Industrial – Joint Investigation Visit; Assets Integrity; Human Rights and Grievance Mechanism.