The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited (NIGCOMSAT), Jane Egerton-Idehen, has urged heads of public institutions to address their financial weaknesses and establish credibility before seeking additional funding for institutional reforms.

Egerton-Idehen made the call during an episode of the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation Podcast moderated by Fatima Kere-Ahmed, Acting Director, Process of Crime Recovery Management Department, Code of Conduct Bureau, and an alumna of the Aig-Imoukhuede Public Leaders Programme.

Speaking on measures public institutions need to attract sustained investment, Egerton-Idehen said leaders must first demonstrate that their institutions can responsibly manage and deploy existing resources.

“It is so important you fix your financial fragility before you go and ask for more money,” she said.

According to her, establishing financial credibility begins with basic practices, including transparent and regular financial reporting, as well as demonstrating a consistent ability to meet institutional targets.

She stressed that institutions must demonstrate their capacity to deliver results before asking external funders and investors to commit additional resources.

Egerton-Idehen said funders also needed evidence that institutions had the capacity to absorb capital and convert it into measurable results.

“It could be basic habits you consider as a leader, like transparent, regular financial reporting.

“There should be some kind of evidence that the institution itself can actually execute that capital, absorb it, execute it,” she said.

She noted, however, that institutions did not necessarily have to demonstrate commercial returns to establish financial credibility, saying clean audits and functioning institutional structures could also build confidence among funders.

“It doesn’t have to be delivering commercial economic value. It could be clean audits, functioning structure. Those start to matter,” she said.

Also speaking, Africa Director of the MacArthur Foundation, Kole Shettima, agreed that trust was central to financing decisions, noting that there was no perfect formula for determining which institutional reforms would succeed.

Shettima said funders often had to take calculated risks based on the credibility, experience and trust they placed in reform leaders and institutions.

Egerton-Idehen advised reform leaders to make transparency a proactive practice rather than waiting until they were asked to provide financial information.

She maintained that institutions that demonstrate transparency, sound financial management and the capacity to deliver would be better positioned to attract sustained funding for reforms.