Accountant Innocent Okwuosa urged Nigeria’s Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRC) to require a separate practices framework as the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) mandatory reporting start approaches in 2028. Okwuosa made the proposal in an Oct. 28 opinion column published by Premium Times Nigeria.
He wants the document added in a future revision of FRC guidance, saying it should connect an entity’s sustainability strategy with practices addressing identified risks and opportunities. Okwuosa said he had encountered sustainability policies built around general ambitions without concrete practices linked to assessed risks. His illustrations included water management at breweries, energy management at hotels, and financial institutions factoring environmental, social and governance issues into credit and investment decisions.
The FRC’s Sustainability Reporting Guideline 1 (SRG 1) 2026 uses staged readiness checks. Entities must provide second-stage materials no later than three months after a reporting period begins. These include a sustainability disclosures policy, identification and assessment of sustainability and climate-related risks and opportunities, and board approval of the policy. The third stage, due within six months of the period’s start, includes an Enterprise and Sustainability Risk Management Framework, industry-specific metrics and targets, and board approval. The guideline does not list a separate practices document.
The IFRS Foundation says IFRS S1 covers sustainability-related financial disclosures, while IFRS S2 adds climate-related requirements. The standards address risks and opportunities that could reasonably be expected to affect an entity’s prospects, including its cash flows, access to finance or cost of capital. Industry guidance gives processed-food businesses energy-use measures and calls on beverage businesses to track water withdrawn and consumed, including the share associated with areas under high or extremely high baseline water stress. Companies assess whether the relevant industry guidance applies to them.
The SEC says mandatory reporting applies to public-interest entities for accounting periods starting on or after Jan. 1, 2028. For small and medium-sized entities (SMEs), it begins with periods starting on or after Jan. 1, 2030. Voluntary adoption is available for periods ending on or before Dec. 31, 2027. The 2028 start is the next scheduled implementation milestone for public-interest entities under the SEC timetable.
