Association of Sustainability Professionals of Nigeria, ASPN has boosted the young body with induction of 45 new members to assist in redefining, understanding and improving the practice of sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Nigeria.
The aim of the body, formed last year is to put sustainability and its practice at the heart of every corporate organisation and the public sector with the understanding that without the practice, the long existence of business is not guaranteed. The body has members who have worked as sustainability managers/directors for a long time and have qualification not only in education but in practice.
Kenneth Amaeshi, the President of ASPN who is also the Director of Scaling Business in Africa Consortium at the University of Edinburgh Business School, United Kingdom, said the association is happy to induct its first set of members. “Our induction ceremony is a major milestone for us being the maiden edition. We also consider this a major milestone in Nigeria in view of our role in nation building. We are determined to seek to redefine corporate responsibility and economic, environmental, social, and governance practices in the country”
The Vice President, Ini Abimbola, who said sustainability looks for impact beyond CSR, was delighted that even the public sector is beginning to understand how critical sustainability is, that is why government has economic sustainability plan. “Sustainability is beginning to permeate organisations and public and private sectors”, she said.
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Chris Ogbechie, Professor of Strategic Management and the Dean at Lagos Business School, Pan-Atlantic University, who was a keynote speaker at the Association of Sustainability Professionals of Nigeria’s inaugural induction ceremony in Lagos, has stated that sustainability has become more strategic for organisation because it is a big driver for innovation.
Ogbechie, who spoke on the theme: “Importance of professionalizing sustainability in Nigeria”, charged the practitioners to brace up and create the necessary opportunity that would enable organisations to give more recognition to the sustainability sector.
“Practitioners need to level up and have a great necessary impact that would ensure that professionals are elevated to the board level where decisions concerning the organisations are taken. This will help deepen the sector and reposition the industry,” he said.
Speaking to BusinessDay at the induction ceremony, Ken Egbas, director of events described that association as an army with a common goal. “If we are fragmented and doing things in silos, there is the tendency there will be no center. The formation of the association is creation of epicentre for common cause.
On the question of deep understanding and practice of sustainability within the society and professionals, Egbas said the challenge with sustainability is that it has been ‘technicalised’ and people struggle to understand it. He explained that sustainability has been in existence from the foundation of mankind, making reference to quotes like: live and let’s live; lets regenerate to back his argument.
He agreed that society needs to demystify sustainability and take it away from the theoretical terms to simple practice. For instance, he said irresponsible behaviour such as mishandling of plastic waste affects all of all of us. “Sustainability is not a practice we should forcefully imbibe but love to do and this is what ASPN is promoting and selling the same to the leadership in Nigeria.
Stating that sustainability and caring for the environment started with mankind, he said “sustainability simply means how I exist and live that you exist and flourish. God’s intention is that we exist and flourish. We flourish when the environment supports it and the society and the government are better for it.
“What we tell ASPN members is that it is impossible to promote sustainability in an organisation when the practitioner does not understand or believe in it; it then becomes a job function. The challenge in the society is that we do things as function without belief. What we try do in the association is not just duty function but understanding the reason we do what we do”
According to Egbas, if sustainability managers play their roles effectively, organisations will survive, the environment will survive and there will be economic growth, emphasising that “there is no future for business if we don’t make the future the business. There have been examples where businesses fail because the society fails. Society is the environment and the environment is the oxygen the organisation needs to survive”, he said.
