Scholarly Works

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://repository.ui.edu.ng/handle/123456789/11960

Browse

Filters

20214

Settings

Subject: search.filters.subject.COVID-19

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    COVID-19 and Corporate Governance Performance: Beyond the Financial Metrics
    (IntechOpen, 2021) Onwuka, I. O
    Corporate governance and, more broadly, the performance of corporate boards have traditionally been measured using financial metrics. These financial metrics such as Return on Investment (ROI), Return on Assets (ROA), Return on Equity (ROE), Earnings and Profitability Ratio (E and P) are ex post measure of organizations performance arising from corporate board activities. These financial metrics are largely one-dimensional measure of corporate performance and do not fully account for the other dimensions of organization responsibilities. The COVID-19 and the changing organizational dynamics have made the case for corporate board’s performance to be assessed beyond the usual financial metrics. In this study, we provide a framework that accounts for the various dimensions of organization activities: finance, social and environmental, the Triple-Bottom (TBL) approach. A TBL-compliance metric was constructed, which tracked the performance of selected manufacturing firms in Nigeria using a content analytical technique. The result showed that the majority of the firms performed remarkably well in areas of profitability and economic value creation but less satisfactorily inareas of social and environmental sustainability. On aggregate, the sampled firms committed less than 1% of their profit after tax on corporate social responsibility, while less than 5% of the sampled firms scored above average on the TBL-adoption matrix.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Tackling Poverty in Era of Covid-19 Pandemic: The Contributory Pension Option
    (Academic Journals, 2021-11) Onwuka, I. O
    In December 2019, news broke out that a novel coronavirus has hit the city of Wuhan, China. It was reported that the SARS-CoV2 virus is responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic. The coronavirus pandemic has impacted severely on the country. As expected, the pandemic has worsened the fate of the poor and most vulnerable households in Nigeria. To cushion the impact, the federal government of Nigeria (FGN) has instituted various palliative measures including cash grants of N5,000 (US$14) monthly to approximately 1 million vulnerable households. However, a review of these measures shows that they are grossly inadequate and incapable of any meaningful impact on the suffering of the masses. The government is clearly hamstrung in this regard due to huge shortfalls in revenue as a result of the pandemic. To this end, the study reviewed the contributory pension scheme in Nigeria and recommended that government should leverage on the pension fund which is currently in excess of ₦7 trillion. The study argued that government should amend the extant regulatory framework for recovery of pension contribution to enable the contributors to access up to 30% of their contributions to help cushion the effect of the coronavirus pandemic. These withdrawals will be restored through increased accretion to the funds by government and private sector employers when normalcy returns to the country. This will help to alleviate the sufferings of over 9 million Nigerians who are currently enrolled on the pension scheme.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Microcredit and poverty alleviation in Nigeria in COVID-19 pandemic
    (Centre on Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific (CIRDAP), 2021) Onwuka, I. O.
    Microcredit is a financial service whose importance is often understated. When lack of access to microcredit is exacerbated by a public health emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic, its real significance as an essential service in poverty alleviation becomes more apparent. The outbreak and spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has led to dramatic transformations of every sector of the Nigerian society including microcredit delivery system, where formal and informal actors co-exist often in an uneasy relationship. Unfortunately, strategies for inclusive microcredit delivery before and during the COVID-19 pandemic are lacking in Nigeria, fuelling the further exclusion of informal sector in microcredit governance and policy process in Nigeria. The paper reviews the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria and identifies policy gaps in microcredit delivery and governance mechanism. The study also highlights the linkages between COVID-19 and microcredit in poverty alleviation with a view to catalyzing increased and inclusive access to microcredit and sustainability policy in Nigeria. It is argued that acknowledging the role of microcredit in informal economy and poverty alleviation is the critical first step towards framing a sustainable microcredit policy in which primary stakeholders are involved.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    COVID-19 and Corporate Governance Performance: Beyond the Financial Metrics
    (Hilaris publishing, 2021) Onwuka, I. O
    Corporate governance and more broadly, the performance of corporate boards have traditional been measured using financial metrics. These financial metrics like Return on Investment (ROI), Return on Assets (ROA), Return on Equity (ROE), Earnings and Profitability Ratio (E and P) are ex-post measure of organizations wellbeing or lack thereof arising from corporate board activities. These financial metrics are, for all intents and purposes, self-serving and one-dimensional measure of corporate performance. They do not fully account for the other dimensions of organization responsibilities especially, the social, health and environmental benefits expected from organization’s activities. The COVID-19 and the changing organizational dynamics have made the case for corporate board’s performance to be assessed beyond the usual financial metrics. In this study, we provide a framework that accounts for the various dimensions of organization activities: finance, social and environmental; the so-called Triple-Bottom (TBL) approaches. A TBL-compliance metric was used to track the performance of selected manufacturing firms in Nigeria using a content analytical technique. The result of the analysis showed that majority of the firms performed remarkably well in areas of profitability and economic value creation but performed less satisfactorily in areas of social and environmental sustainability. On aggregate, the sampled firms committed less than 1 percent of their profit after tax on corporate social responsibility while less than 5 percent of the sampled firms scored above average on the TBL-adoption matrix. From the findings of the study we can conclude that manufacturing firms in Nigeria are yet to be fully committed to social and environmental sustainability. The study recommended for a regulatory re-jig away from the usual mandatory declaration of commitment to concrete actions based on measurable indicators on social and environmental sustainability compliance.