Dr. Dauda Garuba, a consultant ​to​ Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI, has warned Nigerians to stop ​being over-religious, ​believing that crude oil​, ​the nation’s major source of income, will last forever.

​DAILY POST reports that Garuba ​gave this warning in Lagos on Tuesday at the ongoing workshop​ on reporting of the Extractive Industry.​​

In his presentation on overview of the extractive sector in Nigeria, ​the expert urged government and the citizens to take ​issues on the industry more seriously.

“We must stop this ‘oil i​s​ God’s gift mentality’​; ​il will dry up one day. Sometimes, I believe that the fall in oil price was a blessing in disguise.

“You will recall that when that happened. Nigeria started to give agriculture the attention it deserve.​

​”​During that time, former Minister of Agriculture (Dr. Akinwumi Adesina​), did his best and that was why President ​Muhammadu Buhari backed his bid to become President ​of the African Development Ban​k, even before his was sworn-in in 2015.

“The mistake we made then was that we focused on upstream sector. But it is the downstream sector that affects the common man. Downstream builds more capacity for the people. It gives job opportunities and ​ensure f​low of cash.

​”I describe the upstream as where the money is, while downstream is where you have development”.

Garuba lamented that the extractive sector still faces a lot of challenges. He said players in the sector were not totally transparent and accountable.

“The industry is the most investigated. You must have heard or seen reports by World Bank, NEITI, Senate, Reps, KPMG, Ribadu led-panel ans so on.

“Singapore has 11 refineries, no single oil well. They actually refine for others, can you imagine? You can see now that some individuals and firms are under probe for claiming oil they never brought to Nigeria.

“Nigerians must address critical issues. Why are we refining our own oil abroad in 2017? Malaysia made $25billion in 2015 alone by exporting palm kernel. Ethiopia has its airline as money spinner; they now have 87. Nigerian has no aircraft.”

Garuba further appealed to the media to help NEITI hold government agencies and companies more open in their dealings.

“The truth is when government is shortchanged, it affects everybody. Assist NEITI report violations, expose IOCs that refuse to remit funds”.

“NEITI seeks to eliminate of all forms of corruption in the revenue determination, payments, receipts, posting and application of resources. Please propagate this by putting government agencies and companies on check”.

NEITI, founded in 2003, is the Nigerian national sub-set of the global of global Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).

It promotes transparency and accountability in Nigeria’s extractive industries to drive sustainable socio-economic development and good corporate governance,