As conversations around good corporate governance in Nigeria continue to gather interest from well-meaning Nigerians, two of the country’s institutions that champion public trust and ethical values have renewed their commitment to deepen collaboration on good corporate governance in the country.
To this end, the Institute of Directors (IoD) Nigeria and Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) Nigeria have both agreed to set up a working committee that will come up with a memorandum of understanding to institutionalised corporate membership of the IoD centre for corporate governance, and other issues around building a corporate governance network by the second quarter of the year.
“It is important that IoD Nigeria should build key partnerships with institutions and organisations with similar objectives, as this will enable us to effectively project our values across the various spectrum of the Nigerian society and subsequently achieve our objective of entrenching excellent corporate governance practice in Nigeria,” said Ije Jidenma, president, chairman of governing council, Institute of Directors (IoD) Nigeria.
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According to her, the partnership with PwC will be on six cardinal areas of conducting value-based research in the field of corporate governance; joint organisation of advocacy in corporate governance; enhancing the Institute’s director development programmes; supporting IoD’s quest for building a resource centre and e-library of international standard to aid access of members to global and contemporary developments in governance, and collaboration in accelerating the emergent of environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting in Nigeria.
Jidenma posits that the IoD is committed to its cardinal objective of sharpening the professional skills and competencies of directors, business leaders, technocrats, top level civil and public servants through its internationally recognised Director Development Programmes. According to her, the Institute will strive to safeguard the integrity of directorship as a profession by providing best practice guidelines for directors to perform their duties effectively.
“Our Institute and PwC has come a long way in the areas of partnership and collaborations in the quest for the furtherance of the entrenchment of good corporate governance principles in Nigeria,” Jidenma stated.
Obioma Ubah, partner, corporate responsibility, diversity & inclusion, PwC Nigeria, on her part said the partnership will help strengthen PwC’s purpose of building trust in the society. “There is a great alignment in purpose and with the partnership we are seeking to provide the wealth of experience from PwC to support the IoD in achieving its objectives.”
Ubah posits that the partnership will leverage on PwC’s structure and capacity to help directors across different organisations. “PwC outside of Nigeria has got programmes that they run with directors outside of Nigeria. What we are going to do is to bring that structure into bear here in Nigeria. Outside of Nigeria there is robust engagement with the IoD and we have been able to see areas of interest that we can collaborate,” she stated.
