Idongesit Mishael, Uyo
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the National Assembly have been urged to strengthen regulation and oversight of financial institutions to ensure that banks’ lending and investment decisions do not undermine the environment, human rights and livelihoods of host communities.
The call was made Friday by the Fair Finance Nigeria Coalition at the end of a three-day Capacity Building Workshop on Responsible Finance Influencing in Nigeria, held in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, with support from Sida and in partnership with BudgIT, STEPS, CODE, Policy Alert, CISLAC and Oxfam.
Accountable Governance Programme Manager, Oxfam Nigeria, Henry Ushie, said regulators must ensure that financial institutions operated within a framework that protected citizens and communities affected by projects financed by banks.
Ushie specifically called on the CBN to improve the regulatory framework governing the banking sector and ensure that existing sustainability policies were not merely adopted on paper but effectively implemented.
He also urged the National Assembly to strengthen its oversight of banks and their regulators, particularly by reviewing existing laws and scrutinising the implementation of sustainability frameworks within the financial sector.
“We are calling on banks and financial institutions, and their regulators—the Central Bank of Nigeria—to do the needful by improving on the regulatory framework,” Ushie said.
He added that the National Assembly should also “improve on their oversight duties to these banks and to their regulators to make them also be able to sit up and then look at their regulations again.”
According to him, responsible financing must go beyond compliance with minimum regulatory requirements, insisting that banks should have clear sustainability policies and ensure that communities directly affected by their investments were involved in the implementation process.
Ushie explained that Fair Finance Nigeria, which commenced in 2024 as part of Fair Finance International, had assessed four major banks—United Bank for Africa, Zenith Bank, Access Bank and Standard Chartered Bank—against several environmental, social and governance benchmarks.
He said the assessment identified gaps in areas including corruption, biodiversity, climate justice, human rights, gender, transparency and accountability, with concerns over the impact of bank-financed activities on host communities.
The findings are consistent with the coalition’s earlier policy assessment, which evaluated the four banks against more than 400 international ESG criteria and recorded an average score of 1.7 out of 10. (Fair Finance International)
A member of the coalition, Dr Harry Udoh, said the workshop was designed to mobilise community, media and civil society voices to push financial institutions towards greater transparency and accountability in the application of Environmental, Social and Governance principles.
Udoh said the consequences of irresponsible financing were particularly evident in the Niger Delta, where activities supported by financial institutions could affect farming, fishing, environmental quality and the general livelihoods of communities.
He cited findings from a survey in Ibeno and Eastern Obolo, where he said farmlands and fishing activities had been significantly affected by the activities of oil companies, stressing that the financial institutions providing funding for such operations could not be divorced from their consequences.
“We want communities to be able to speak up, civil society to then engage to bring about change—social change within the environment,” Udoh said.
Representing the Executive Director of CISLAC, Auwal Ibrahim Musa Rafsanjani, the organisation’s Finance and Administration Manager, Magaji Mato, said the initiative had already produced outcomes through policy assessments, community engagements and a dialogue in Eket that led to a petition to relevant authorities over alleged harm to host communities.
Mato expressed optimism that the enthusiasm and active participation of the participants would translate into stronger advocacy for responsible financing.
Executive Director of Policy Alert, Tijah Bolton Akpan, also commended participants for their commitment, stressing the importance of adopting the right approach during advocacy engagements and ensuring that communities were fully integrated into campaigns concerning their rights, livelihoods and interests.
Speaking on behalf of the participants, Premium Times journalist, Ekemini Simon said the training had created fresh interest among participants to pursue further work on responsible finance, environment and community rights. He made case for more specialised training for journalists.
Daily Independent correspondent, Dr Idongesit Ashameri, described the training as unusually practical and urged the organisers to sustain the engagement with media professionals and other participants beyond the workshop.
Another participant, an environmentalist, said the training had deepened her understanding of the connection between banking decisions and environmental outcomes. She noted that while the idea that banks could influence environmental conditions might initially appear abstract to ordinary citizens, the workshop had provided participants with the knowledge to explain how the policies, actions and inactions of financial institutions could produce either positive or negative consequences for communities and the environment.
