Stakeholders decry proposed legislation of CSR

Stakeholders have flayed the growing pressure of legalising Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR in the statutes books to make companies more socially responsible to their communities.

They castigated this call in Lagos last week during the 2016 annual conference of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Nigeria, ICSAN, Lagos chapter.

Speaking on the theme of the conference, “Corporate Social Responsibility, a veritable tool for governance”, the keynote speaker and Managing Director of Platinum Corporate Solutions, Accra, Ghana, Catherine Engmann, said, CSR  in Africa is gradually assuming importance and getting fused into companies’ corporate governance practices.

Engmann, who supported her point with a Zulu proverb, “I am because you are, you are because we are,” traced origin of the CSR to Quakers of the 17th and 18th centuries.

She maintained that CSR as being practised currently among companies in Africa is based on the concept of self governance but related to external legal and regulatory mechanisms.

She stressed that discussing the emergence and impact of CSR, it’s important to place a company within its socio-economic environment to understand how its operation redounds to the benefit of society as a whole, which may differ greatly as between a company in the west and developing worlds.

Engmann who confined her talk to English speaking Africa countries, noted that relevant characteristics of the African corporate governance is the widest control mechanism within which companies take management decisions and the socio-economic conditions within which those firms operate.

“As we are aware, our corporate governance framework is derived from the colonialists and what they left behind; they left behind their concept of a company and its role in society, and all the laws and the regulations flowing there from.

“On the socio-economic front, African countries are made up of tribes and clans. 

Socially, we organised within tribes. We also have natural resources -some countries more than others- and these have been exploited. But the common thread in all of these African countries are issues of education, poverty, health and so on,” she noted.

She pointed degradation effects of oil exploration and exploitation in the Niger/Delta area, which has boiled down to the crisis in the past and led to the death of prominent people like Ken Saro-Wiwa.

“The question we need to ask is, how should companies manage their business processes to produce and overall positive impact on society? Companies need to be aware of the effects that their activities have on communities and the environment, they have to be seen to be doing what is right, and they have to obey the laws of the land,” she cautioned.

Also speaking on the Socio-economic value of Corporate Social Responsibility, the Executive Secretary of the MTN Nigerian Foundation, Nonny Patricia Ugboma, said in recent years, CSR has become a fundamental business practice and has gained much attention from the management of large international companies.

She said, companies understand that a strong   CSR, programme is an essential element in achieving good business practices and effective leadership.

Ugboma, who is responsible for overseeing MTN Nigeria’s N18 billion CSR investment, said most companies in Nigeria have explored that their impacts on the economic, social and environmental sector directly affect their relationship with investors, employees and customers.

She stressed that although the prime goal of a company is to generate profits, but as company assess their brand in the context of globalization, they are increasingly aware that CSR can be of direct economic value.

-The Nation