BY EMMANUEL ELEBEKE
In order to check the rising spate of fraud in banks and other financial institutions in Nigeria, rules and statutory codes of conducts for practising professionals in the country, must be written, promoted, publicised and strictly emphasised, says Mr. Joseph Daudu, President, Nigerian Bar Association, NBA.

Daudu, who stated this while delivering a keynote address at the 35th annual conference of the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators of Nigeria, ICSAN, in Lagos with the theme ‘Enforcement of statutory provisions for effective corporate governance,’ said that this will enable the government check corruption and excesses in the financial institutions.

According to him, the absence of such codes in the country breeds corruption and hampers corporate governance in Nigeria.

He said that written rules must exist to act as a check to any excesses that may be perpetrated by those who administer the system in trust for others.

The NBA Chairman noted that the depth to which the corporate world fell in 2009, was not sudden but has been brewing for over three decades, without serious action over it, which resulted into finance house scam being witnessed globally.

He said that speculators in this were lured by unrealistic but mouth-watering interest rates of deposited life savings and other forms of deposits in finance houses and wonder banks, insurance houses, and some publicly quoted companies that perfected the art of plundering shareholders deposits ostensibly to finance expansion, consolidation or other acceptable measures in order to loot the deposits that were in their custody, which ordinarily belonged to their shareholders or were kept in trust for investors.

These events, he said, were seen as corporate failures brought about by the absence of weak statutory corporate governance codes.

To nurture a new corporate regime in Nigeria, Daudu said that the world’s best practice statues must displace these criminal tendencies currently hampering corporate governance, if Nigeria is to avoid looming economic disaster and persistent fraud going on in the country.

The National Assembly has been urged to enact unique and comprehensive corporate governance code, which encompasses both United State’s and UK’s approach to the problem of transparency and discipline in the conduct of corporate business affairs in Nigeria.

Earlier in his welcome address, the ICSAN President, Mr. Olatunde Busari said, ‘The codes of corporate governance are codes of common sense. They are guides and ideas that we must imbibe to enable us promote a sane and investment friendly environment in Nigeria. Corporate governance is a worthwhile investment that yields a lot of tangible and intangible benefits to all concerned.”

Busari pointed out that the various statutory provisions are not meant to be punitive but rather are guides and means of ensuring that all stakeholders and those associated with the operations of companies are accountable and transparent in their dealings.

adding that regulatory bodies locally and internationally have evolved various codes, possesses and policies of corporate governance to create an enabling environment for fair-play, transparency, accountability, honesty, trust and integrity, openness , mutual respect and commitment to the organization.

As a professional body of repute and practitioners in corporate governance, the ICSAN President said they are poised more than ever before to bring to the fore, issues that are of national interest for the benefits of all stakeholders.

He described the annual conference as a cardinal programme of the institute designed to increase the intellectual capacity and professional efficiency of their members in every sphere of life.

‘’It has been designed to expose members and all participants to current issues of national interests that relate to the promotion of good corporate governance in the private and public sectors of the economy.’’

According to him, ICSAN is a professional body dedicated to enhancing the status and practice of corporate governance and public administration and the only professional body authorized to conduct the examinations leading to the qualification as Chartered Secretaries and Administrators in Nigeria.

For him, the theme of this year’s conference is a demonstrates the need for concerted efforts towards entrenching practices that are governance friendly in our various places of work and businesses.