Nonny Ugboma is the Executive Secretary of the MTN Foundation (MTNF), the vehicle for driving MTN’s Corporate Social Responsibility strategy. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting and Financial Analysis from the University of Warwick, England and a Master’s degree in International Management from King’s College, University of London, England, she joined MTN in 2003 as a Financial Analyst/Business Planner in the Marketing Division. In this interview with Bukola Afolabi, she speaks on the functions of the Foundation
MTN Foundation has received considerable visibility in the media via its interventions in different segments across the length and breadth of Nigeria. What is the strategy behind your intervention projects?
Let me start by saying MTN Foundation is very appreciative of the media for their untiring efforts at coverage of all the Foundation’s activities and we hope that you would continue to avail us your support. We consider the media as critical in MTN’s quest to improve on the lives of people living in the communities where we operate, and to be a critical agent for social economic development of Nigeria as a whole.
For us, MTN has adopted corporate culture to do good, it is not only important for us to give back to communities where we operate but it is also smart business. We believe that healthy communities are important to the wellbeing of the society. MTN’s Corporate Social Investment (CSI) is an integral part of the business and so we believe that the Foundation is a vehicle to implement MTN’s CSI agenda. We have adopted a systematic approach in delivering our interventions. We consider things like wide impact, replicability of projects – we must be able to replicate projects across the six geo-political zones of the country. We also look at the sustainability of the projects to ensure that the impact is long-lasting
You mentioned that MTNF’s projects have a wide reach. Can you be more specific?
MTN Foundation has 20 projects located in over 300 project sites in the 36 states of the Federation and the FCT under three core areas – Education, Economic Empowerment and Health. The reality is that we are unable to intervene in all the areas of need nationwide, but we certainly hope that we can act as catalysts to encourage other organisations and individuals to do their bit by giving back. Prior to the Foundation being set up, a study was done and the three core areas of intervention were agreed. Subsequently, stakeholder forums were held under each of the three portfolios to prioritise areas of needs that we as a Foundation should concentrate on.
What do you consider critical when selecting your implementation partners?
For us to deliver the quality of projects that we conceptualise in the Foundation, we have instituted clear project consultants’ selection criteria. It is a rigorous process and we go through this with the procurement department to determine the best fits with regard to competence and values. Competence is very key as the organisation must have the technical ability to roll out the project. Values are also very important to us in terms of corporate governance and ethics. These two points are critical agents that can affect the spirit of partnership. In the past, we have had to end relationships with project consultants because they could not deliver on the projects assigned to them. We have also ended relationships with organisations whose corporate governance fell short of the acceptable level. So they go hand in hand. An organisation can have all the competences but if their values do not align with that of MTN’s we would not engage them in any of our activities.
Your initiatives in the health sector have been lauded by many stakeholders. You seem to focus a lot of attention and resources on the health sector. Could you tell us why this is so?
Well the importance of good health in the life of an individual cannot be overemphasised. We are very proud of the interventions we have made under our health portfolio because a healthy nation is a wealthy nation. Some of our interventions under the health portfolio are the Eyesight Restoration Scheme, Y’ello Doctor Mobile Clinic, Medical Support Project under which we have Haemodialysis and Mammography Centres. We support people living with the sickle cell disorder, we support orphanages, we engage in community health screening and we have taken care of many children who were in need of medical intervention here and abroad. I guess health initiatives tend to touch the flesh more because we are either restoring eyesight or we are giving hope through treatment or curing one form of ailment or the other. We also attribute the same level of importance to the other portfolios we have which are education and economic empowerment because they all go hand in hand. We cannot speak about a healthy nation without mentioning education and empowerment really so we are trying to maintain a balance with regard to the projects that we roll out. We try as much as possible to ensure that sustainability is woven into each of our unique projects. The definition of sustainability is different depending on the project so you could have sustainability for income generating activities. For example, at the haemodialysis centres that we have provided, patients pay a reduced fee of N15,000 into the treating hospital’s account compared to an average of N35,000 at other unsubsidised centres across the country. This account is jointly managed by the project consultant and the hospital authorities and the generated funds in this case are used to maintain and keep the facility running. This is an illustration of sustainability from an income generation perspective. Now in the case of the Eyesight Restoration project people may ask, what is the sustainability there? For us, the fact that we have helped people to regain the use of their eyes means that we have contributed to them leading a sustainable life. Ultimately, by helping them to regain their eyesight, we are making it possible for them to continue their education or employment that way they are positioned to be empowered economically. That, to us, is also a sustainable intervention. We also have the situation where we give out scholarships to university undergraduates. The sustainability here is the fact that we are providing students with financial assistance to enable them get education and upon graduation they will be able to lead and maintain a sustainable life, all things being equal. Bottom line is that we are flexible in defining sustainability and ultimately it is the longevity of the impact of the project in the lives of the beneficiaries.
What were the factors you considered before embarking on the EYERIS project? Did you consider sight impairment to be more critical than say, malaria, HIV and AIDS, among other diseases that afflict many people?
The fact is, we consider every debilitating and adverse circumstance to be tragic and awful and can’t say one situation is better than the other. Regrettably, we cannot intervene in every area. For HIV and AIDS, for example, we’ve had a number of initiatives in the past that have touched lives like voluntary counselling and testing centres. As I explained earlier, we help sickle cell sufferers. We have five sickle cell clinics across the country, we have haemodialysis and mammography centres and so on and so forth. But for the Eyesight Restoration scheme, we are aware that the incident of cataract is quite high in Nigeria. Cataract is known to be one of the most common causes of preventable blindness and has very significant social-economic impact on the Nigerian economy. So for us, it was an area we could easily go into and we had the right project partner – the Eye Foundation. The idea was to spend three weeks in each beneficiary state and try as much as possible to screen the eyes of patients and give treatment to those deserving it and conduct cataract surgeries for those who require it. For the EYERIS project, we had the endorsement of the Federal Ministry of Health and we implemented it in six states – Osun, Niger, Abia, Delta, Sokoto and Jigawa. It was a very collaborative experience in these states. You know, when we had the expressions of interest published in the media, many states wanted to be part of it so we shortlisted states where we conducted verification inspections and finally we selected those who were able to provide sites for the exercise to be conducted. Each state must also provide the logistics such as transportation for the beneficiaries to get to the screening and surgery venues. So these six states emerged successful and the project was implemented in the states between April and November 2013 and we touched the lives of 33,000 people across the six states. The 33,000 beneficiaries were broken down as follows: over ten thousand cataract surgeries were performed; twelve thousand pairs of glasses were also given out to those who needed them and in addition we gave out drugs to about eleven thousand patients to treat the various eye conditions they had. This project is very heartwarming especially when you see individuals wrestle back their dignity and their economic empowerment from the scourge of blindness. There are several personal stories of individuals whom I saw when I went round the beneficiary states.
Do you have any success stories from the perspective of your beneficiaries that you would love to share with us?
Yes we have quite a lot of them from all our projects but I will say this one for the EyeRIS project. There is this particular gentleman in Delta State that comes to mind, he used to be a commercial motorcyclist commonly called Okada rider and sadly he lost his sight in both eyes due to cataract and he is the bread winner of the family. He was first brought in by his wife and other family members for the surgery one eye at a time because our surgeons don’t operate on both eyes at the same time. When this gentleman came out of the second surgery, he was alone and the fact that he sat on his motorbike and drove after healing from the surgeries was really remarkable. His family members were extremely elated and the out pouring of gratitude to the Foundation for providing succour is most touching. We have also had lots of stories around our Medical Intervention scheme wherein we help families who have children with congenital conditions especially those of them with holes in their heart. We helped them with the necessary treatment here and in India. We are always very thrilled to see them when they return hale and hearty laughing and running around like normal children. There is a particular child from the Heart of Gold Hospice who had a Fistula and as a result she could not pass out faeces like normal children and she had to be in diapers even at nine years old.
A surgery was done and a pathway was created for her to pass out faeces like every other child like herself. This is very moving and touching. I can be here all day talking about success stories. There is the story of the MTNF MUSON Scholars who have been undergoing music training at MUSON School of Music through our scholarship programme. Nearly 200 students have graduated with diplomas from this institution in six years. To see these students graduate from this institution and go on to further their studies in schools here in Nigeria and abroad is very satisfactory. Three students from the first set became the first African students to graduate with honours from the University of Dayton, Ohio. Some have become professional performers singing in concerts with the likes of London Philharmonic Orchestra, some have also become music teachers teaching music in primary and secondary schools. It gives us great pleasure to know that the graduates from this institution are successfully engaged. There are so many success stories to talk about should we talk about people who have used our haemodialysis centres across the country and how their family members show their appreciation when we visit these centres for evaluation purposes.
Or do you want us to talk about the scholarship which is worth two hundred thousand naira that we are giving to brilliant but indigent tertiary students which we have also extended to the blind students? So there are so many success stories to share. Since its inception, the Foundation had spent N10.2 billion in carrying out its CSR obligations and we have over 300 project sites in the 36 states and FCT. So with that kind of reach you would have lots and lots of success stories coupled with lots and lots of requests which also takes us back to the fact that we can’t do everything.
