SOStainabilityWeekly

By Oke Epia, E-mail: sostainability01@gmail.com  | WhatsApp: +234 8034000706

Trends and Threads

Nigeria’s sustainability landscape: Balancing disclosure, visibility, and accountability

When floods swept across Nigeria in 2022, the damage was not only environmental but also economic. Costs were estimated to be between $3.8 and $9.1 billion, and a UNDP-led study found that over 90 percent of small businesses in the worst-hit states were disrupted, with half suffering total losses. These events are not isolated; they serve as a wake-up call that climate risks and sustainability failures have very real costs for companies, communities, supply chains, and the broader economy.

Around the world, sustainability disclosure has become the new language of corporate responsibility. Global frameworks, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), and the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), are now setting the standards. Investors, regulators, employees, and even customers expect companies to clearly communicate how they are managing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risks. Silence is no longer neutral; it now poses a reputational risk.

Nigeria has tried to keep pace with this shift, as regulatory institutions have taken important steps over the years to ensure companies are accountable. For example, the Nigerian Exchange (NGX) has issued Sustainability Disclosure Guidelines for listed companies; the Central Bank also introduced the Nigerian Sustainable Banking Principles (NSBP), requiring banks to incorporate environmental and social risk management. In a significant policy move, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) recently announced a roadmap to adopt the ISSB’s global standards, gradually aligning Nigeria’s reporting system with international standards.

These are significant steps. They indicate that policymakers see sustainability disclosure as essential for attracting investment and enhancing corporate governance.

Despite progress, a major gap remains: visibility. Many companies are becoming aware of sustainability or ESG policies, and some are even making conscious efforts to implement defined policies. However, many of these policies are often hidden, vaguely worded, or not publicly available. Others publish glossy sustainability reports but lack specific, time-bound targets or board-level accountability. As a result, stakeholders—from investors and regulators to civil society and the public—find it difficult to tell genuine commitment from superficial gestures and smokescreen measures.

Let’s consider the Oil & Gas and Banking sectors, for example, where the stakes are high. Nigeria remains one of the leading global gas-flaring countries, emitting an estimated 5.3 billion cubic meters of gas in 2022 alone, despite a 20% decrease from the previous year. Banks, on the other hand, serve as gatekeepers of capital. Their lending decisions will determine whether Nigeria’s transition finance supports sustainable energy and resilient infrastructure or continues to reinforce carbon-heavy activities. In both cases, transparent, verifiable sustainability disclosures are the key to progress rather than greenwashing.

It is against this backdrop that SOStainability is launching a new initiative to assess the sustainability scoreline of companies and industries. This page will serialize sector-level and company-focused sustainability commitments to evaluate visibility, accessibility, and operational specifics. Do the entities publish standalone policies? Are there designated executives or board committees responsible for oversight? Have they issued sustainability reports aligned with local and international frameworks? And, importantly, are these commitments accompanied by measurable targets? Etc. The goal of this series is not just to identify gaps but to provide an evidence base for constructive accountability, highlighting where Nigerian companies are meeting expectations and where they need improvement.

For companies, this presents an opportunity to stay ahead of regulatory timelines, build investor trust, foster customer loyalty, and demonstrate a genuine commitment. For regulators and policymakers, it presents an opportunity to understand disclosure barriers and refine legislation, regulations, and enforcement. For civil society and the general public, it is a means to demand transparency and accountability from businesses that profit from shared resources.

Sustainability in Nigeria cannot just be about internal memos or buried PDFs. Policies need to be visible, commitments should be measurable, and disclosures must be accessible. Only then can accountability truly begin.

Spotlight

Afriland fire: Health, safety, and ethical corporate governance

The recent and unfortunate fire at Afriland Towers in Lagos has rekindled discussions about corporate governance practices. Specifically, occupational safety and health standards and compliance are now under scrutiny. While public authorities, professional organizations, and regulatory bodies review the tragic incident, the responses of corporate entities regarding the loss of lives and property will be examined closely in the coming weeks and months.     

However, one response that has caught the attention of the corporate world is that of Mr. Tony Elumelu, chairman of Heirs Holdings, the parent company of Afriland Properties Plc, which owns the towers.

On learning of the inferno, Mr. Elumelu reportedly cut short his trip to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). A statement from his office communicated how deeply sorrowful he felt over the incident. The empathy was swift and unmistakably sincere: “I am shattered by yesterday’s devastating incident at Afriland Towers, which took the lives of our dear colleagues.

“No words can capture the magnitude of this loss – not for their families who loved them, not for the friends who valued them, and not for those of us who worked beside them,” he said, adding: “Yesterday was a stark reminder of what truly matters: our irreplaceable people, those who walk through our doors each day and share our mission.” Elumelu’s timely message might not bring back the dead or heal the wounds of those injured, but it can certainly ease the pain of those who lost loved ones and offer some comfort to those recovering from the emotional and physical trauma of this terrible incident. He showed leadership when it mattered most, making it clear that people mattered more to him than profit or property. Despite having an extensive global net worth and networks, Elumelu prioritized human lives over his impacted organizations (the building also housed a branch of the United Bank for Africa, one of his most valued conglomerates). “I also want to thank all those who supported in one way or another, from emergency responders and first aid workers to members of the public who showed courage and compassion,” he said.

Tony Elumelu has leveraged a moment of crisis and profound sadness to impart lessons on corporate ethical practice that will inform lessons in sustainability for years to come.

Washing and hushing

Ogoni: Unanswered Questions as Nigeria Resumes Oil Drilling

Last week, President Bola Tinubu met with a delegation of Ogoni leaders at the State House, during which he directed a return to oil extraction in the beleaguered region. For a community still hurting from decades of social and environmental injustice and recovering from the deadly communal crisis of the 1990s, which claimed the lives of its prominent members, this development brings mixed feelings.

For an administration constantly seeking ways to boost revenue, resuming extraction in Ogoni is a positive step. However, it won’t be viewed the same way by climate activists, environmental rights advocates, and local community folks, whose living conditions have worsened despite the wealth of resources beneath their land. Oil exploration in Ogoni was halted in 1993 due to sustained protests against environmental damage led by the late Ken Saro-Wiwa. The agitations took a violent turn, lives were lost, and the Nigerian military junta bared its fangs by executing Saro Wiwa along with eight other activists in 1995. Ogoni was left bloodied, scorched, and parched, with land that could no longer yield produce, and streams polluted by spilled black gold.  

The large-scale pollution and degradation of Ogoni gained global attention again when the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), in a 2011 study, reported that drinking water had carcinogen levels 900 times above the recommendation of the World Health Organisation (WHO). The study, which also revealed severe air pollution, estimated that $1 billion would be required to clean up the land over a 25-30 year period. The Nigerian government adopted the report and established the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP) with a shared funding responsibility among stakeholders, including Shell, which reportedly contributed $270 million. In 2016, the Muhammadu Buhari administration launched the Ogoni clean-up with much fanfare. Since then, not much has changed in Ogoni land, with social deprivation and environmental degradation still being the lot of the communities and the people.

Perhaps the only thing that has changed substantially is the fortunes of those responsible for implementing, managing, and overseeing the cleanup of Ogoni land. Unscrupulous government officials allegedly colluded with contractors to divert funds meant for the project, while the environment remains damaged. There were reports of contract awards to unqualified and incompetent firms, falsification of laboratory results, inflation of project costs, and barefaced blockade of access to external auditors. MOSOP (Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People) had alleged in 2020 that $350 million invested in HYPREP had been misappropriated. The government, both federal and state, has remained silent on these allegations. Even as the grave corruption allegations against HYPREP remain unaddressed in Nigeria, litigation is underway in London against Shell, where some Ogoni communities are demanding that the oil giant take responsibility for the pollution of their land, allegedly caused by the company’s infrastructure between 1989 and 2020. How can the government ignore these questions of accountability and proceed with resuming oil exploration? 

While directing his officials to ensure the resumption of oil drilling, President Tinubu awarded posthumous national honours to four Ogoni sons who died fighting for environmental justice. Recall that in June, President Tinubu conferred such on Saro Wiwa and his eight colleagues, who were brutally murdered by the military regime in 1993. Although these gestures are commendable, they are best viewed as a smokescreen that perpetuates the injustice done to the Ogoni people.

Therefore, for many in Ogoni land, resuming drilling at this time is seen not only as insensitive but also as a terrible double burden – a lack of accountability in patched-up remediation efforts and an escalation of environmental misfortune.