Law and Development Review

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Why is it important?

Transparency and accountability are key concepts of good governance that are repeatedly demonstrated to have the capacity to translate natural resources wealth to sustainable development of economies. These concepts are particularly important to countries rich in natural resources and Nigeria is one of such countries. Evidence however suggests that Nigeria is not benefiting from the gains expected from its natural resources despite policies and legislations like the NEITI Act 2007 which are aimed at promoting sustainable development through transparency and accountability. Various attempts at theorizing the reasons behind these apparent failures have tended to blame external factors. These external factors are sometimes disguised under the omnibus descriptions of resource curse phenomenon and corruption. This paper argues that although these factors may be contributing to the continued failures of several development initiatives, there may be need to ensure that the legal frameworks and instruments developed to achieve these objectives are not in themselves faulty. The article posits that the internal normative incoherence in some of these laws creates the room for continued failures despite the best of intentions and interests. To demonstrate this argument, the paper through normative analysis, examines the NEITI Act 2007 in relation to its key transparency and accountability provisions.