By Henry Uche, Lagos
The Institute Of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Nigeria (ICSAN) has warned that weak corporate governance is precarious to Nigeria’s economic growth and development, cautioned Corporate leaders and captains of industries against unethical Practices that could endanger the economy.
At a corporate governance roundtable media brief in Lagos yesterday, the Chairman, Corporate governance & Capacity Building Committee of ICSAN, Adenyinka Hassan, asserted that Corporate governance failure both in the private and Public sector undoubtedly affect Nigerian economy in the long run.
Hassan stressed the need for proper indoctrination, training and retraining of every Personnel in the organization from entry point on sound corporate governance and ethical practices to inculcate the spirit of doing the right thing at all time in the blood vessels of every employee to ensure business profitability and sustainability and national development.
“Adhering to sound corporate governance and ethical practice is a challenge in Nigeria especially in the public sector. Its failure by Corporate leaders have caused more harm to both their organizations and the country at large. So ICSAN will continue in stakeholders engagement to entrench this acceptable practice into the fabrics and nucleus of every organization.
Intimating newsmen of the Institute’s 2021 Roundtable on Corporate Governance slated for May 20, 2021, Hassan noted that it was aimed at improving the capacity of board members in both private and public sectors.
According to him, the Roundtable themed: “Ethical Governance in the Boardroom: Implications for Stakeholders” would cover the conduct, structure, and ways of addressing conflict management by board members.
“The roundtable on corporate governance is pertinent and timely to address corporate failures. Looking at the society and its current challenges, sound corporate governance is important to assist boards and it’s members at every point in time, and across all sectors of the economy.
“When your board is corporate governance compliance, your organization turns out well, the society and the nation would also enjoy the ripple effects. So we need to get the Management and Board of Directors (BoD) be in the vanguard of sound corporate governance and ethical practices and ensure compliance by every Personnel at all time,”
He urged educational institutions to incorporate Corporate governance code into their academic curriculum adding that ICSAN is already collaborating with some academic institutions in the country to teach same and even make it a distinct discipline.
“The institute has moved to take corporate governance to the primary level as a part of civic education to inculcate its practices from a tender level. This way, we are bringing the knowledge of corporate governance to our children and the youths that really need it and then upscale to the tertiary level.
“Currently, many tertiary institutions have partnered with ICSAN on this and I’m cocksure that before long, the nation’s corporate polity would evolve with international best governance practices,” he said.
Hassan also urged organizations to conduct recurrent stakeholders engagements to timely disseminate important information. He also pushed for collaboration with public sector practitioners to engender participation, compliance to the principles of corporate governance.
On her part, Chairperson, Advocacy and Publicity Committee of ICSAN, Mrs Lynda Onefeli, urged members and corporate bodies to take advantage of the Institute’s Program on Corporate Governance audit board evaluation certification training She noted that the training scheduled to hold May 14-21, 2021 would focus on board audit evaluation to strengthen boards’ structure.