The Executive Secretary, of the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) Nigeria, Amb. Shuaibu Adamu has disclosed that Nigeria is the first African country to be selected by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), to launch the International Financial Reporting Standards IFRS S1 and IFRS S2.
Adamu made this disclosure at the 3-day virtual workshop on IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards for companies as well as investors in the capital market in Lagos organized by NGX Regulation Limited, the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), and the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) of Nigeria.
He attributed the key factors that qualified the country for selection for the launch of the IFRS S1 and IFRS S2 mainly to the public awareness and capacity building in manpower and other critical assets
He said: “It is encouraging that African countries are coming together to collaborate in this capacity-building programme because Africa does not want to be left behind.
“We want to thank NGX RegCo for agreeing to partner with us and they have been so far worth partners in this endeavour. ISSB wants implementation of these standards globally and they have taken time to ensure Africa is not left behind”, Adamu added.
Speaking at the event, the Chief Executive Officer of NGX RegCO, Ms. Tinuade Awe, said the 3-day virtual workshop was organized to help investors understand the basic concepts of the SASB standards and make effective decisions based on the standards.
She restated the NGX RegCo’s commitment to promoting a fair, transparent, and orderly market that thrives on full and timely information needed for the protection of investors in the Nigerian capital market.
Awe clarified: “As a member of the NGX Group, our commitment towards driving sustainability and climate disclosures dates back in time and continues as we partner with organisations such as the FRC and so we are pleased to have these sessions as they are important, and we look forward to having more collaborations with the FRC as well as other organisations.”
According to her, there is an adoption readiness strategy mapped out to help accountants and auditors in sustainability and climatic reporting.
She explained that the adoption readiness working group was a creation of the FRC supported by the ISSB where a group of people is being put together to advise or help the FRC on a roadmap for getting to the adoption of these standards to work in Nigeria.
In her remarks, a Board Member of the ISSB, Ndidi Nnoli-Edozien, said that the IFRS standards were in use across 140 countries and the objective was to enable companies to provide comprehensive, decision-useful sustainability and climate information to global capital markets, develop a common language of sustainability-related disclosures.
She expatiated: “What we have done is adopt a building block approach which allows for regulators to put in place a connection between not just the IFRS standards, but also existing local multi-stakeholder information needs and local standards that currently exist. All together to meet the information needs of investors globally.
The idea is to make things simpler so that on one hand, S1 and S2 are interoperable with jurisdictive requirements like you have in Europe, for example, ESRS, and adapted to meet broader multi-stakeholder needs that may look familiar like the GRI Standards so that essentially, a comprehensive foundation of disclosures is provided. The S2 is what will be implemented first”, Nnoli-Edozien added.
