Finance is not neutral; every loan and investment shapes lives, communities, and ecosystems.
Yet, a groundbreaking new assessment by the Fair Finance Nigeria (FFNG) Coalition reveals that Nigeria's leading commercial banks are falling drastically short of global Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards, averaging a critically low 1.7 out of 10 as they opt to hide behind outdated regulatory minimums.
The Scoreboard
- 1.7 / 10 — A Critically Low Baseline (Overall Average)
- 0.0 / 10 — Tax Transparency (Refusing to disclose country-by-country reporting or operations in tax havens)
- 0.9 / 10 — The Climate Gap (Continuing to heavily finance high-emission sectors without credible transition strategies)
Profiting Without Protection: The Disclosure Gap
The nation's first-ever comprehensive policy assessment evaluated Access Bank, Standard Chartered, United Bank for Africa (UBA), and Zenith Bank against more than 400 international sustainability criteria.
While financial institutions are increasingly called to account for the social and environmental footprints of their decisions globally, this assessment reveals that Nigerian banks are largely prioritizing regulatory compliance over strategic sustainability.
Profiting Without Protection:
The assessment shows that these banks provide zero or weak commitments to safeguarding human rights and biodiversity within their wider investment portfolios and corporate supply chains. They are reaping massive profits from high-impact sectors while refusing to be held accountable for the social and environmental footprints of their decisions.
The Policy Demand: Moving Beyond "Tick-Box" Compliance
The current 2012 Nigerian Sustainability Banking Principles (NSBP) are painfully outdated, creating a loophole that allows banks to avoid genuine sustainable operations.
The FFNG Coalition—comprising BudgIT, Policy Alert, CISLAC, CODE, STEPS, and Oxfam—is urgently calling on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), the Bank Directors Association of Nigeria (BDAN), and bank executives to convene a multi-stakeholder roundtable. It is time to modernize the sector's ESG frameworks to align with global standards and demand that banks immediately move beyond "tick-box" compliance to genuine corporate finance accountability.
Download the full 40-Page report
