RE-EXAMINING THE NATURE OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ENFORCEMENT IN NIGERIA: A CASE FOR THE PRACTICE OF OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Abstract

Enforcing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been largely controversial. This is largely due to questions of whether legitimate claims can arise since social responsibility can be lacking in established legal rights and obligations. This paper assesses the nature of CSR framework in Nigeria to determine the possibility of a legal claim against governments or multinationals operating in Nigeria. This finding confirms that Nigerians, government and its institutions do not know the characteristics of Nigeria’s corporate legal system and its efficiency with regards to enforcement of corporate social responsibility. The idea is to establish a fundamental nexus between the need for a legal framework in Nigeria and the world for enforcement of corporate social responsibility between multinational companies (MNCs) and the host government. The research achieves the outcome by evaluating the culture around occupational health and safety regulation in Nigeria. This paper maintains the view against the voluntarist conception that sees the non-chalant nature of practice of corporate social responsibility in Nigeria as the offshoot not lending voices to enforcement by the people and the government of Nigeria towards the practice of corporate social responsibility by multinational oil and gas companies in Nigeria wrapped into the culture behind the practice of occupational health and safety in Nigeria. As a result, the study seeks to resolve the question of whether there is a culture of occupational health and safety in Nigeria for multinational oil and gas companies operating in Nigeria and the impact the citizen’s voices could have for the enforcement of corporate social responsibility in their country Nigeria. The aim is to conceptualize and broaden understanding of the political ground on which occupation and health and safety will fall and voices in favour of enforcement by the people is incidental to or a function of framework and systems design. Aspects of relativist, non-relativist, and communalist analytical methods provide a context for an examination of the political ground on which occupational health and safety (for corporate manslaughter punishment of multinational oil and gas companies in Nigeria) will fall and the voices against the activities of multinational companies in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector. It argues that the cultural gaps for enforcement created within CSR framework provides the basis for the non-chalant attitude from multinational oil and gas companies operating in Nigeria. Initial findings reveal a strong connection between defective systems design in terms of culture for corporate punishment in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector, citizenry voices and high tendency for low practice of CSR in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector by MNCs. This has implications for associated and connected institutional systems in Nigeria.