‘Sustainable Institutions are Built on Corporate Governance’

By Ugo Aliogo

Strong corporate governance has been adjudged to the central in building sustainable institutions in public and private sector respectively.

Speaking at the Institute of Directors’ Nigeria (IoD) 2018 Fellows’ Night and Investiture with the theme: ‘Building Sustainable Institutions,’ held in Lagos recently, the Group Managing Director, Custodian Investment Plc, Mr. Oluwole Oshin, said sustainable institutions address the interwoven mix of managerial decision influenced by financial and environmental and social indices.

He also noted that sustainable institutions bring more financial values, measures how its action impacts the environment and actively work on reducing it, adding that they also care about employees, customers and communities.

Oshin, further stated that for organisations to build sustainable institutions; there is need address corporate governance, people and skills, culture, inclusiveness and inequality.

“Enduring institutions are built by selfless committed and dedicated and focused leaders. Successive leaders of sustainable institutions are therefore expected to be an embodiment of integrity.

“Another ingredient is governance. A sustainable institution is built around good governance or good corporate governance. I am referring to both the public and private sector. The benefits of good governance are innumerable ranging from corporate successes to investor confidence, minimisation of waste and corruption, risk management and positive brand reception.

“Those are some of the key benefits; government must be principled based and not subjective,” he noted.

The Custodian Investment boss explained that enduring institutions are governed by effective constitutional, regulatory and legal framework drawn up by its board of directors.

According to him, organisational guidelines must be distilled down the hierarchy of any organisation in order to ensure buy-in of staff.

He added that the recently exposed code of corporate governance draft was a sign that the code was set out to address most of the challenges faced on the journey to building sustainable institutions.

He however stated that it would be good to also consider a home-grown code that aligns with Nigeria’s culture and level of development.

According to him: “A one-sided fits all code may not be the best for us since most industries are young and companies are mini-small and medium size run by entrepreneurs.

“They would probably require a code with a development orientation, one which seeks to directly balance governance objective and growth.”

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