By Emmanuel Udodinma
As part of its Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy, First Bank of Nigeria Limited has reiterated its commitment to reducing its carbon footprints and promoting environmental sustainability in Nigeria as well as in countries on the continent where it is present.
The Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer of First Bank, Dr. Adesola Adeduntan, stated this at the commemorative tree-planting exercise, held by the bank, in partnership with the Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF), at the Lekki Conservation Centre in Lagos, last Friday.
He said that the exercise, which was part of activities to celebrate this year’s edition of the bank’s annual Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability (CR&S) week, would see First Bank and its partners initially planting 50,000 trees over a three-year period from 2023.
Dr. Adeduntan, who said that First Bank was very excited to be partnering with the NCF on the tree-planting initiative as, according to him, the Tier 1 lender “takes its responsibility to environmental sustainability seriously,” pledged that after planting the 50,000 trees, the bank will again hold discussions with the NCF on how it can assist in planting more trees in order to help actualise the Foundation’s goal of increasing the country’s forest cover from its current state of about 4-7 per cent to 25 per cent by 2047.
According to him, as a bank that has been around for over 130 years, First Bank knows the importance of sustaining the environment.
He stated that the tree planting initiative would be a key pillar of FirstBank’s social responsibility and sustainability, adding that apart from its Nigerian operations, the bank would implement the initiative in the seven African countries where it is present.
The First Bank boss said: “When you look at the twin problem of desertification and erosion; these are major impacts of nature which are causing degradation in our environment and the solution to them is actually in planting trees.
“So at First Bank, we’ve made up our mind that, we will as usual, because we are woven into the fabric of the society, we will be part of finding solution to this problem and that is why we have adopted tree planting as a very important pillar of our corporate social responsibility and sustainability.”
