A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE NATURE OF CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENFORCEMENT POSSIBILITIES FOR CORPORATE MANSLAUGHTER PUNISHMENT IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Enforcing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been mainly contentious. 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 issues with enforcement of corporate social responsibility for corporate manslaughter punishment of multinational companies and people’s thought on what the practice of corporate social responsibility in Nigeria really is. This finding confirms that the nature of enforcement of corporate social responsibility in Nigeria can be tricky. Critics have argued that corporate social responsibility in Nigeria is a distraction for business from meeting its primary goal of profit making1. The idea is to establish a fundamental nexus between lack of institutional framework for the enforcement of law in Nigeria and lack of legitimacy of institutions for the enforcement of law in Nigeria. The research achieves the outcome by evaluating the mechanism in place for enforcement of corporate social responsibility. This finding confirms that Nigerians, government and its institutions do not know of the efficiency with regards to enforcement of corporate social responsibility among companies operating in Nigeria thereby making companies in Nigeria not to be corporate socially responsible. As a result, the study seeks to resolve the question of whether there is still misunderstanding in Nigeria and in the world with regards to practice and enforcement of corporate social responsibility among companies and what corporate social responsibility should be. The aim is to conceptualize and broaden understanding of companies in the oil rich Niger Delta Area of Nigeria incorporating social and environmental concerns in their business operations. There needs to be a legal framework in Nigeria and in the world for enforcement of corporate social responsibility between multinational companies (MNCs) and the host government. It argues that the cultural gaps in Nigeria, at the level of enforcement of corporate social responsibility and law through government institutions, it is not there but in the United Kingdom at the level of administrative rules and enforcement, it is there. This means that in the United Kingdom (UK), there is a certain level of enforcement that goes on in terms of companies having to comply and explain. Initial findings reveal a strong connection between defective systems design in terms of culture for enforcement of corporate social responsibility and government institutions in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector by MNCs. This has implications for the government and its institution doing little or nothing to ensure the enforcement of corporate social responsibility among companies operating in Nigeria.