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By Vera Wisdom-Bassey
Mrs. Olubunmi O. Osuntuyi doubles as the Secretary General/Permanent Head of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Nigeria. With Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Industrial Relations and Personnel Management from the University of Lagos and a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) degree in Sociology, Mrs. Osuntuyi is an ICC Certified Trainer on International Contract Terms (Incoterms® 2010, a registered trademark of ICC). Mrs. Osuntuyi holds a certificate on Leadership Training on Ethics and Corporate Governance from the Robert Morris University, USA.
Her being in the private sector speaks eloquently of her commitment to best practices and good business ethics. Her work experience cuts across governmental journalism, advertising, training, and capacity building. Before now, Mrs. Osuntuyi worked with the Institute of Directors (IoD) Nigeria and IQ Limited as Head of Programmes and as a Training and Chief Operating Officer respectively.
As an exceptional leader, Mrs. Osuntuyi is in-charge of developing and directing the implementation of the strategy to ensure achievement of objectives of ICC Nigeria as well as ensuring and managing the growth and development of the chamber. In this interview, she bares her mind on so many issues. Except:
Background
My name is Mrs. Olubunmi Osuntuyi, the Secretary General/Permanent Head of ICC Nigeria. I’ve been the secretary for some years now and what ICC is all about is to promote international trade. Excellency is what we stand for, but in order to make smooth trade to continue to flow, we bring out a number of rules; rules relating to trade, business, rules relating to solutions process, all manners of rules, and these rules have been endorsed by international organisations like the UN, WTO, among others.
ICC
ICC is a global organisation with presence in over 100 countries all over the world. It is an organisation that has celebrated its centenary anniversary, precisely in 2019. I joined the ICC Nigeria about 20 years ago. Before then I was the Institute Director of the company for some time and I am glad to have been able to impact on business in one way or the other, and delighted to showcase Nigerians and Nigerian businesses in the international terrain. The platform of the ICC provides Nigerians opportunity to interface with their colleagues internationally, so we are really promoting interpersonal relationship, the image of the nation by extension and we are telling the world that we have people who have the requisite skill to compete with their counterparts all over the world.
In the formulation of the rules, we thought of the rules governing international trade, like the Incoterms we currently have. The Incoterms has been in existence for over 80 years, and has gone through a number of reviews. You might have heard about it, if you’re involved in international business. If you’re an importer, you will know about the Incoterms. The Incoterms helps you to know which mode of transportation you are supposed to employ in taking your goods from one location to another. Some goods are perishable and if you expose such goods to danger, you bear the cost. In order not to waste resources, it is important to know all these rules and be able to apply them where practicable.
Means of transportation of goods and services vary. They could go by road, sea, air, rail. Whatever means of transportation you choose is in the interest of the goods you are bringing in. So these are some of the interwoven services we render to our members.
Non members
Not necessarily. There are times a lot of people who are not my members come into the secretariat, and in certain instances, if I feel such organisations can go to a local chamber, I recommend them. If I feel they can go to any of our national or bilateral chambers, I recommend them but if I feel they can benefit tremendously from being members of ICC, I put them in.
Incoterms
The Incoterms as a testament affects every business person all over the world and that is why I said we bring out rules that govern international trade. As an example, there are numbers of rules governing international trade. In signing up a contract, if you are sending goods, you have to be very specific as to where the goods need to be delivered. The risk is that such goods can be delivered elsewhere to the detriment of your resources or be missing.
The intention of our founding fathers is to promote international trade, and benchmark on these rules so that both are not at a loss, and the person we are supplying the goods to is not at a loss. We realised that because of lack of knowledge, a number of people just know they can supply this number of goods to this country that will be able to generate foreign exchange, so one needs to look at this requirement critically before venturing into such business relationship. You need to look at the requirement critically to avoid losses.
We also provide a platform for chambers. The world chambers federation, the ICC Chamber, is about 10,000 all over the world and registered under these categories, we have the Lagos Chamber, the NACIMA, which is the national body of the chambers of ICC, and the bilateral chambers like the Abuja Chambers, Nigeria/America, Nigeria/British Chamber. All of these chambers are our members and by extension, they are our members in the world chambers federation.
Every two years, the world chambers federation holds what is called, “World Chambers Congress”. We have one coming up in November in Dubai. The World Chambers Congress is for us to know what is happening in other chambers all over the world and learn from them and bring the resources into their own chambers or what works in other countries of the world, or to replicate or refine or adopt what works for other countries in their own country. That is another aspect of what ICC stands for.
Trade
And we have the Court of Arbitration and platform for mediation. ICC believes that the strategy to ensure smooth trade should not be hindered by any circumstance, so we promote court distribution. We all know what our courts do is not peculiar to Nigeria alone. In other countries too, cases are pending in the court endlessly and some will take years. If you’re inputted in the contract, it then makes it easier for them not to go to court.
From the onset, the strategy to resolve disputes is put in place. If you’re inputted in the contract, it affords them the opportunity not to go to court but when it fails with the arbitration, going to court becomes necessary.
Arbitration
It’s been super effective. ICC has fully endorsed it, and has been applauded for landmark cases that run through to trillions of dollars worth of cases all over the world and more businesses are looking now in the area of arbitration rather than mitigation.
That is another aspect of the ICC. It works with different commissions on banking and financial laws, commercial laws, intellectual properties, customs and trade facilitation. Globally, the chief partner to the customer organisation is the ICC. Locally, here we try to replicate that corporation, and that is to see the smooth running of trade.
