Following discoveries of fraud amounting to huge sums of money in both private and public sectors, with little heard about punishment, the president of Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM), Munzali Jibril, has said that sanction against flouters of corporate governance in Nigeria is not adequate.
In Nigeria, fraud cases and incidences of non-compliance to instituted corporate governance in public institutions and private companies dominate discussions, but nothing is said of convictions to serve as deterrent.
Speaking with BusinessDay recently in Lagos, Jibril, who rated compliance to corporate governance low in Nigeria due to corrupt system, said sanctions against the practice were simply not enough.
“The sanctions are there in the law books but they are not effective. In this country, we all know that if you steal government money and you can hire the best SANs who know the system, it will be difficult to convict you. But we can get around all that.
“We can set up special courts and sanitise and purge institutions like the judiciary. The raid by EFCC on judges’ homes, whether it was right or crude process, however, exposed certain things. There was a judge that withdrew from a case he was handling simply because the wife of one of the accused visited his (Judge’s) wife. This is the calibre of people we need,” he said.
He believed that even in a low value system, compliance to corporate governance could be achieved, citing notable Nigerians like Nnamdi Azikiwe, Gabriel Onosode and others who did show examples to compliance to corporate governance ethics.
On why he thinks that failure rate of compliance to corporate governance is growing, Jibril simply attributed it to corrupt system, believing that the system, including the police, needs to be purged to enthrone orderliness.
The management expert also believed that the reward system in the society was not enough, saying, “There are organisations where the reward system is clearly inadequate, for example, the Police where the reward system is inadequate to take care of the welfare of the officer. In this country, we are telling the police to supplement since they are not given enough.”
Jibril, whose institute is organising a conference on Corporate Governance and Institutional Performance next month in Abuja, said the objective was to once more bring the discuss to the fore and serve as a platform to sensitise Nigerians on the corporate governance and compliance.
“Sensitisation is a process and I believe it will take a long time to secure the buy in of the country as a whole,” he said, believing that corporate governance would also assist in the Ease of doing Business.
“For instance, when a foreign investor comes and he goes through many offices to get something done, and each office is a toll gate, this is frustrating,” he said, but with corporate governance compliance in a few offices, the foreigner would be delighted to invest in Nigeria.