Left to right: Ayoola Olukanni & Seye Awojobi, IoDCCG Board members, Shuaibu A. Ahmed, ES/CEO, FRCN, and Shuaibu Idris, Chairman, IoDCCG during the courtesy visit.
The Chairman, IoD Centre for Corporate Governance, Shuaibu Idris, on 15th February, 2022 led Members of the Board of Governors and Management to a courtesy visit to the Senior Management of Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, FRCN, at its Head Office at Alexander House, Ikeja Lagos, and was received by the FRCN team led by the Executive Secretary/CEO, Shuaibu Adamu Ahmed.
In a report issued by the IoDCCG’s office, The Chairman of the Centre, Shuaibu Idris, expressed appreciation to the Executive Secretary, Shuaibu Adamu Ahmed and his team for hosting IoDCCG team despite receiving IoD (our parent organization) about a week ago despite his tight schedule. The Chairman stated that this goes further to demonstrate the Council’s commitment to developing productive partnership.
The Chairman also explained that the IoDCCG Board of Governors was carefully constituted to cut across many institutions with diverse interest and to ensure proper representations that matches the aspirations of the founding fathers and mandate of the Centre. These institutions are; Institute of Directors, IoD, Securities & Exchange Commission, SEC, and Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC, others on the Board of the Centre are; the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE, the Chartered Institute of Bankers, CIBN, and the Nigerian Association of Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Mines and Agriculture, NACCIMA. The Centre hopes to expand the Board membership to include regulators such as FRCN, CBN, NCC, PENCOM and NAICOM among others, all in a bid to harmonise and have a single forum where Corporate Governance Practice is held in high standards.
Among very important requests presented by the Chairman to the ES/CEO of FRCN include Partnership with FRCN on the forthcoming maiden Edition of the National Corporate Governance Summit, invitation to FRCN as a Member of the Board of Governors of IoDCCG, invitation to FRCN to become an Institutional Corporate Member of the Centre and partnership with FRC on the production of a book on Corporate Governance Compendium
In the Chairman’s closing remarks, he thanked the Executive Secretary/CEO of FRC for the great opportunity of meeting with his team.
The Executive Secretary/CEO, Shuaibu Adamu Ahmed, in his response welcomed the IoDCCG team to FRC and acknowledge that there is need to further strengthen the existing relationship for greater impact in the Nigeria corporate and public sectors landscape.
He stated that there are 7 directorates at the FRC and one of such directorate is saddled with the sole responsibility of Corporate Governance and its practices in Nigeria. In his words, he stated that the FRC understands the need to bring Corporate Governance practices into the Public and the Not-for-profit sectors having successfully achieved certain level of penetration in the Private sector. This initiative he said has been instituted with an initial meeting with the Minister and as soon as plans are formalized, IoDCCG will be partnered on this initiative.
The ES/CEO mentioned that other major areas the FRCN will seek the Centre’s partnership include: Partnership with IoDCCG in the area of Advocacy on Corporate Governance, collaborate with IoDCCG in the area of training and capacity Development by holding at least 1 training per quarter.
He expressed readiness to collaborate in the area of research stating that companies who have filed reports as mandated should be able to see publications which shows analyses of reports highlighting learnings, trends and recommendations among other issues.
The FRC welcome the idea of collaboration on the National Corporate Governance Summit, reiterating that there is no need for duplicity and pledged to support the Centre on the programme.
The ES/CEO assured the Centre of its readiness to join the Board of IoDCCG once a letter to that effect is shared for action citing that this is a partnership FRC is willing to promote.
In his closing remarks, he assured the IoDCCG team of FRC’s support and collaboration to advance the Corporate Governance Practices in Nigeria. He concluded by saying “we have beamed enough searchlight on the private sector, we now need to consider taking a critical look at the public sector”, and on note, he thanked everyone for their attention.
The visit was wrapped up with presentation of journals produced by IoDCCG as well as other documents by the IoDCCG Chairman Alhaji Shuaibu Idris, to the FRCN Executive Secretary/CEO, Shuaibu Adamu Ahmed.
