Ini Onuk: CSR On Her Mind

Wake her at midnight and the Lead Consultant and Chief Executive Officer of ThistlesPraxis Consulting, Lagos, Mrs. Ini Onuk, will most likely preach the ideals of corporate social responsibility on the spot. She tells Chinyere Fred how it all began.

If it is about wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeves then Ini Onuk will gladly plead guilty. When the subject is corporate social responsibility, that is. But you don’t blame her for that passion.
She believes it is one area many Nigerians and corporate organisations do not seem to understand properly. What does she mean?

“Having worked for over 20 years within and outside Nigeria and having some insight into the corporate responsibility initiatives of organisations and businesses in Nigeria and around Africa, and adding my work with non-for profit organisations over the years, it became clear that our understanding of what CSR is and what it is not is befuddled. My focus is helping companies do CSR well and helping the community that needs it the most and becoming that important link between corporate and social responsibilities,” she explains.

CSR for her should be an integral part of any responsible corporate entity. It encompasses not only what companies do with their profits, but also how they make them, she says.

What is more? It also goes beyond philanthropy, compliance and addresses how companies manage their economic, social and environmental impacts.

But she is not done yet. This amiable mother of three also sees corporate social responsibility as a means of managing relationships within the business sphere: the workplace, the marketplace, the supply chain, the community, and the public policy realm.
“Arguing about the existence of CSR is like arguing if businesses exist in the first place because the social contract is the prerequisite for the very existence of businesses,” she quips.
That probably explains why she can’t stop talking about the forthcoming Africa CEO Roundtable on Corporate Social Responsibility, a flagship event, her consulting outfit, ThistlePraxis Consulting, has put together after months of painstaking research in the various sectors of the economy. 

With the theme, ‘The Business Case for CSR and its impact on African Economies’, the three-day event billed for June 15 in Lagos, will parade world and industry leaders, including the first female president of Ireland, Ms. Mary Robinson.

She enthuses, “Is planned as an industry flagship event attracting the crème of Africa’s leading figures and decision-makers to immediately spark off conversations and discussions about Corporate Social Responsibility in Africa. It will also bring counterparts from Europe, United Kingdom and the United States for peer reviews and best practices.” The CSR dream hasn’t come easy though. Daily, she is confronted with critics, who according to her, argue that the social contract is a “fiction”, an intangible notion.

“But I argue for the existence or existentiality of the social contract. The social contract exists and functions as a conceptual and analogical system,” she adds.

But don’t get her wrong. She is not advocating that the government abdicates its roles for the business community. She explains, “Rather, it augments the responsibilities borne by the government and civil society and goes beyond what is required by law. The potential that CSR (done properly) offers requires the combined efforts of society as a whole. Neither the government nor businesses nor civil society is able to master the enormous challenges of our times single-handedly.

“I strongly believe that for us to have a headway, we may need to put in place a national strategy to promote corporate social responsibility (CSR) with the aim of making a contribution to meeting the core challenges facing us in the globalised world of the 21st century.”

Ini is also passionate about volunteering. According to her, the culture of people working on behalf of others or a particular cause without payment for their time and services, is fast disappearing and must be addressed quickly. She opines: “We need to go back to the basics. Our young people come out of school with too much entitlement mentality. They lack the requisite skills needed to gain employment and most of them are unemployable. Volunteering opens your mind and broadens your scope of understanding. It enables you to gain skills that place you in good stead for employment or business.”

For her, the link between volunteering and CSR cannot be over emphasised. “I am preaching as well that businesses/organisations should, through their employee volunteer programmes contribute to creating societies in which all sectors are complementary – working together to answer the needs arising from new social and economic conditions and cooperating for the benefit of society, building trust between the public and private sector.

Speaking further on the roundtable event, she calls it the most stressful she has ever organised. She should know about roundtables and conferences, having successfully organised many as the executive secretary of the elite all-women organisation; Women in Management and Business (WIMBIZ).

What then could be the challenge here? According to her, there has not been any support from the expected quarters. “We began advertising and sending out letters inviting organisations to participate since December last year. To date, we do not have any sponsorship for a continent wide event of this magnitude from any Nigerian organisation.
One organisation said to me “they do not invest in untested waters”. Others say a small company like ThistlePraxis Consulting cannot be hosting an event of this magnitude.

Many say that our advert that Pres. Robinson is the keynote speaker is an advertisement gimmick. Unfortunately for them, Pres. Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, will be landing this country soon for this event. The interest has rather been far more than our expectations from outside Nigeria. We have delegates coming in from South Africa, Angola, Brazil, London and some other African countries.

A 2008 Draper Hills Fellow on Democracy and Development at Stanford University California and an alumna of the Harvard Business School Executive Management Programme, Ini is one woman that can never take a ‘NO’ for an answer.

That is probably the reason she will continue to preach the gospel of corporate social responsibility, with or without any support. It makes no difference.

* Published in Leadership Newspaper on Wednesday, January 25, 2012.