Telecoms Stakeholders Differ on Tenure Limit, Sanctions in Corporate Governance Code

Telecoms stakeholders Tuesday differed on the 15-year tenure limit stipulated by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for directors of private and public quoted companies, as contained in the Code of Corporate Governance document.

Aside the tenure limit, they also raised concerns on ethical issues, sanctions and rewards as well as risk management, enshrined in the document.

The NCC had in 2012, released a voluntary Code of Corporate Governance for the telecommunications sector, but commenced a mandatory implementation phase of the code from November 1, 2016. The commission on Tuesday, engaged the stakeholders in a sensitisation workshop in Lagos, where the stakeholders raised their concerns about some areas of the code.

While some stakeholders argued that the NCC might be infringing on the rights of a private company by stipulating 15 years tenure limit for its director and chief executive, others argued that the 15 years tenure should be reduced to allow fair play in such organisation. In a contrary view, some supported the 15 years tenure limit, which they argued, would allow for the injection of fresh people with fresh ideas to run telecom organisations.

Some insisted that telecom organisations must maintain ethical values that allow shareholders and investors to have fair idea of the running of the organisation where their interests lie. In the area of sanction, most stakeholders supported the idea to sanction any organisation that will not comply with the implementation process of the code, while some called for encouragement and education, instead of sanction. They all however commended the NCC for introducing reward for those organisations that will comply with the rules of the code. Other issues raised were risk management policy and whistle blowing policy.

Discussants during the panel session, included the Executive Commissioner, Stakeholders Management at NCC, Mr.Sunday Dare, who led the panel discussion; President of the Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Mr. Olusola Teniola; Chairman, Diamond Bank, Prof. Chris Ogbechie; Director, Nigerian Stock Exchange, Mrs. Irene Robinson-Ayanwale; and Chairman, Financial Reporting Council, of Nigeria, Mr. Adedotun Sulaiman, who also presented the keynote paper at the sensitisation workshop.

The Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, said the sensitisation workshop was designed to engage all stakeholders and to get their feedback on the matter. He however assured the audience that NCC would collate all views and impute them during review of the document.