Yemisi Izuora
The Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) has ably demonstrated its robust and yet to be matched Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
The company has taken its enviable CSR beyond its host communities where it has proved to be a responsible corporate citizen by overwhelmingly creating opportunities for the community residents.
Apart from capacity building in those areas, NLNG as a worthy partner has taken entrepreneurship skill acquisition so seriously to enhance economic wellbeing of community people.
Beyond the community effort, the company is highly regarded as funding and improving education in the country.
In addition it has however partnered the Nigerian media in furtherance to its avowed commitment to enhance communication skill of Nigerian journalists.
At a recent training exercise for the media in Lagos which Oriental News Nigeria, a leading Online News publication in Sub-Saharan Africa, benefited, General Manager External Relations of NLNG, Kudo Eresia-Eke told Yemisi Izuora that the whole idea is about enhancing professionalism among practitioners.
Eresia-Eke said, ” The Journalist tell our stories, what I mean is not NLNG story but the story of our life in Nigeria. Journalists live in an international world, they are our universal representatives, the world has gone digital in terms of media, the tools have transformed and has become extremely sophisticated, and we looked and said there was need to create a crop of journalists who are able to deploy the tools of today”.
According to him, NLNG is focused and dedicated to help in the building of a better Nigeria, this is to empower the individual that has been affected so that they can fly, so that they can get better and compete with their peers around the world. NLNG would like to touch more people, it is our own way of giving back to the society, it is part of our own CSR.
He recalled that, the Abuja Chamber of Commerce and Industry recognized the contribution of NLNG to the growth and development of the society and has given the company an award in that respect.
“We have instituted two prizes, the Nigeria prize for Science and the Nigeria prize for Literature.
As you know the prize for Literature has been more illustrious, we have been awarding the prize almost every year but not quite so for the Nigeria Prize for Science, so we have to look again to see what we could do to promote science and we found out that the infrastructure that will enable science in our environment was highly inadequate, it wasn’t world class to say the least, so the board of directors of NLNG decided to create Centres of Excellence in terms of technology and science through building and equipping Laboratories that are world class in some of the universities in our country, to at least own world class Laboratories where good science and research can be done” he said.
But again, its not possible for us to support every University, so we have to develop a criteria for creating the centres of excellence in each of the geo-political zones, so this is what led to selecting six, one per geo political zone and hopefully all the Universities around there will be able to benefit from the Hub of excellence which we have created, the GM added.
He said, ” That is how we picked these six Universities, North/west – ABU, North/Central – University of Ilorin, North/East – University of Maiduguri, South/East – University of Nigeria, Nsuka, South/South – University of Portharcourt, South/West – University of Ibadan.
“ABU is already enjoying it because their Laboratory has been commissioned and it is running and the people are happy, it’s like fish being released into water, because science is about having the ability to conceive enact and practicalized. But when tools are not available for you to do that , it can be frustrating, in fact some of the lecturers want to become students again, so that they can enjoy the facilities” Eresia-Eke noted.
He disclosed that each of the laboratories costs $2million totaling $12million in all, adding,”it is all part of the efforts of NLNG to do what we can to help to build a better Nigeria”.
He said the Abuja Chamber of Commerce looked at companies all over the country, checked which one of them is most distinguished in terms of being able to do Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) outside its immediate area of operations, they looked at the program running and in their own view, NLNG was no 1, using the university support program (USP), because they thought this is a long lasting thing that will give great benefit to the nation and it is going to excite not only the intellectual community but also the business community .