In furtherance of First Bank’s resolve to ensure that businesses operate within ethical standards and professionalism, it recently, in partnership with Certified Financial Analyst (CFA) Society of Nigeria sponsored an ethical competition among Nigerian university students. The competition was designed to challenge, prepare and inculcate ethical values in the Nigerian youth preparatory to their management of businesses and the country at large. This report assesses the competition and its importance to both enterprises and nation-building.
Nigeria’s population is about 180 million and out of this figure, it is said that the youth, the future leaders, accounts for about 70 per cent. It is therefore very important to concentrate the nation-building on this segment of the society by equipping them with necessary skills and morals. This is with the understanding that early exposure of the youth to ethical standards, moral behaviours, business decisions and management would impact positively on businesses and ultimately the nation.
It was the thought of building businesses and the nation that recently led Certified Financial Analyst (CFA) Society of Nigeria to conduct Universities Ethics Challenge sponsored by First Bank of Nigeria aimed at deepening business thinking, business decisions, enthroning ethics, professionalism and capacity building in Nigeria’s financial sector, especially among university students.
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This kind of programme of inculcating the right ethics on the students who are business managers of tomorrow has therefore become very important as all businesses should thrive on ethical standards, trust and professionalism. The consequence of lack of trust, lack of ethical behaviour which results in poor decision making is short or epileptic existence of institutions as manifested in some dead companies. But when rules, ethics and standards are obeyed, companies are likely to flourish and the nation gains.
No wonder, therefore First Bank which has operated for 125 years leveraging standards and professionalism and which is desirous of seeing other institutions survive such long duration in business keyed into CFA initiatives of promoting those values that will see organisations stay long in the business.
Under the Universities Ethics Challenge, exclusively sponsored by First Bank of Nigeria, CFA assembled seven Nigerian universities who indicated interest to participate in the challenge. In the ethical challenge, the universities with five students representing each university were exposed to identical ethical realities in a typical investment environment. The students were given case studies of a possible violation of ethical standards in an investment sector. They were tasked to do a review and identify where there are ethical violations and make recommendations for action.
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Five of the universities made it to the final stage and they were the University of Lagos, University of Ibadan, University of Nigeria Nsukka, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
At the end of the exercise, University of Lagos team was announced as the winner of the competition, making the university two-time winners of the Universities ethic challenge. There were fewer universities in the first edition. The trophy was presented to the school by Ini Ebong, Group Executive, treasury and financial institutions, First Bank in the company of Kemi Adeosun, Minister of Finance and Okechukwu Enelamah, Minister of Industry, Trade, and Investment.
The University of Ibadan was the second runner up and Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife was the first runner up. The exercise is to equip them with the necessary skills for business challenges ahead.
Banji Fehintola, President, CFA Society Nigeria said the society understands the importance of ethics to the financial institutions in Nigeria. “Financial institution in Nigeria thrives on ethics and what we are doing is to partner with institutions to talk to schools before their students get into the investment industry, inculcating in them ethical principles that we think will make the industry sustainable in the long run”
According to him, ethics is a key component of the CFA institute’s certification globally underpinning the role of ethics to investment. “If people who are investing do not trust the people they are giving their money, then you have a serious problem because investment thrives on trust, even beyond the banking industry, ethics is a major issue,” he said.
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He said that there have been ethical violations in the financial industry but not exclusive to the financial industry and that is why CFA society is doing its best to improve the level of ethics and professionalism in the industry. Due to violations of ethics, the financial industry loses a huge amount of money yearly to frauds and this is worrisome.
With First Bank coming on board as a sponsor, Fehintola said the bank has been extremely supportive. “When we pitched the whole idea to First Bank to support the ethics challenge, they came and exceeded our expectations in areas we didn’t think about. For instance, the bank told us that we can partner with the bank, not just monetarily but it can offer us its training Centre, accommodation for the students, offer us all its facilities to use, which to me shows the bank believes in what we are doing. The bank believes that ethical standard is very important not just for the banking sector but for the entire financial sector, so it has been extremely supportive and if I may add to that, we ask them for one year support but First Bank offered us 3 years support for this challenge”.
Ismail Omamegbe, Head, Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability First Bank added that the bank has been around for a very long time since 1894 and one of the reasons are because the bank believes in corporate governance. “We believe in ethics, integrity, that is extremely important. We do think that we have to demonstrate this as well not just believing”
He also said that it is important to lay good foundations in building the nation as the bank believes one of the ways to do that is to partner with institutes like CFA which is a global organization that focuses on integrity and ethics. He said the programme aligns with the bank’s Samuel Asabia Chair on business and ethics at Unilag.
“The key thing as an organization, we believe, is that ethics is very important and if you do not have integrity there is something wrong. University students, for example, are young and are going to take over the institutions in the future, so how do you build an environment where they can inculcate the values of ethics and demonstrate it much later in life where you have to basically build a foundation that is why we support CFA”.
First Bank’s Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability focus on areas of People Empowerment and Education are in line with CFA’s promotion of educational excellence. Core to the Bank’s educational interventions is the Bank’s Endowment programme. The bank instituted Professorial Chairs in academic fields in several universities across the geopolitical zones of the country whilst also facilitating infrastructural development in some of these universities to complement government’s efforts in educational development.
CFA Institute’s educational programmes are designed to develop the next generation of investment professionals globally. The activities under the educational programmes are carefully designed to promote a high level of professionalism and ethical practices in investment research by students from universities and business schools through hands-on mentoring and intensive training.
Ethics, professionalism and good business decisions are crucial to the survival of businesses and the nation. Therefore building Nigeria of tomorrow starts today and with the youth and that is why the CFA programme sponsored by First Bank is apt and should be further encouraged.
