Specifically, the Partner, Executive Edge Limited, Lagos, Dr. Okechukwu Mbonu, a former managing director of Sierra Leone Brewery Limited, made the call at a lecture, entitled, “Sustainability of family owned conglomerates in Nigeria,” organised by the Nigerian Academy of Engineering as part of events to mark its 2019 technology dinner.
Mbonu said family businesses have the potential to serve as catalysts for direct creation of wealth, and reduction of poverty, provide competition for better services, technical innovation, and enhanced local tax income. However, their procedures and processes remain pedestrian in terms of strategic planning, and corporate performance management, internal business control, human resource management policies, and management of information and communication.
Mbonu argued that with the assistance of competent and experienced external management consultants, a transformation journey that would involve strategic tax and financial optimisation, structure and human resource review, sales review, corporate governance review, and getting listed as a publicly quoted company in the capital market, could be enforced as necessary enterprise steps for sustainability.