The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) has organised a two-day corporate governance workshop for companies that benefited from its equity investments or partnerships in project development.
Welcoming participants, the Director, Legal Services, Mohammed Umar said the workshop was conceived to create a window of discussions and feedback between the board’s top management and partner companies where the board has invested or partnered to understand the board’s expectations from their projects.
Also speaking, the Director, Finance and Personnel Management, NCDMB, Isaac Yalah said the training was also geared to catalyse businesses in Nigeria by providing a mechanism that would grow them in line with the board’s 10-year strategic roadmap.
Yalah’s words: “This led the board to develop an investment policy and create the Commercial Ventures Department that will intervene in all of the board’s commercial and investment related activities.”
He stated the board introduced a two-fold approach of looking into specialised projects and how to intervene by lending support to participants reiterating that this was in line with the key objectives of the 10-year strategic roadmap to create 300,000 jobs and ensure Nigerian Content grows to about 70 percent by 2027.
Yalah disclosed that the training is to meet that objective and create sustainability for the companies and develop a matrix for effective peer review and for collaboration.
In his keynote address, Executive Secretary, Simbi Wabote, who was represented by the Director, Planning, Research and Statistics, Patrick Obah, commended all parties involved in driving the vision of the workshop targeted at the production sub-sector.
Obah regretted the prevalence of company failures in the country, a situation the board had to bring its affiliate companies together, to analyse behavioural traits, demographic attitude and ability to incorporate feedback.
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He enjoined participants to leave the workshop better equipped with the skills set to effectively manage the operations of their companies and to primarily promote local content.
Obah stressed that the board will continue to collaborate with its affiliate companies for the overall good of the nation’s economy and promote indigenous goods and services to become global competitors as collaboration with the private sector will enhance the nation’s GDP.
In his remarks at the end of the two-day workshop, the Senior Technical Assistant to the Executive Secretary and General Manager, Strategy and Transformation Projects, Abayomi Bamidele, stressed that the training was intended to build capacity on corporate governance within the country as part of the board’s mandate to develop in-country capacity, aside being a regulator.
Bamidele indicated that affiliate companies at the end of the workshop are expected to submit their reports regularly, hold quarterly meetings and follow the financial draw-down plan as contained in the Shareholders’ Agreement.
He explained that the companies are also expected to draw up a succession plan framework to forestall companies revolving round individuals which is the bane of corporate organisations in Nigeria.
