SELECTION CRITERIA

A) EXPERT ASSESSMENT

The following criteria will form the basis for the expert assessment aspect of the considerations for deciding award winners in each zone, which will carry a weight of 35% of total scores attainable by each nominee.

1) Corporate governance practice
Adherence to good corporate governance practice has been established as crucial to the good fortunes of a company,. Therefore good corporate governance counts as one of our key assessment factors, particularly with regards to board/management relations and delegation of managerial duties to competent subordinates as well as relationships with staff, shareholders and other stakeholders such as financiers, suppliers etc.

2) Regulatory compliance
The degree of compliance of a company to legal requirements could be regarded as a part of good corporate governance but due to the generally poor level of compliance by many member companies of corporate Nigeria we have elected to treat it as a separate aspect for the purposes of this award scheme.

3) . Corporate/Institutional Performance
This obviously is a key criterion, corporatel performance, in this case being measured by the following quantitative key performance indicators:
i) Revenue growth
ii) Profitability growth
iii) Gross Profit margins
iv) Returns on capital employed
v) Returns on assets
vi) Returns on equity
vii) Balance sheet growth

However, because most of the nominations are for private companies whose financial statements are not readily available, in some cases not all these KPIs can be used. Consequently we use only the available KPIs without penalizing nominations for not having the unavailable ones forwarded to us

Inevitably though for public institutions, financial performance is not a primary consideration. Rather qualitative analysis of service delivery replaces financial performance in this regard.

4.) Business Ethics
The degree of corporate integrity adhered to by an enterprise/institution is a major consideration. Since good business ethics is a desired manner of corporate behavior, our assessments of nominations for these awards include the consideration of the degree to which the enterprise/institution adheres to proper business ethics, particularly the integrity with which it is managed and with which it deals with both business counterparties and its customers.

5.) Corporate Social Responsibility
Nominees are assessed based on their CSR activities. Jurists are instructed to consider CSR spend as a proportion of total revenues and a qualitative assessment of the impact of CSR on the targeted beneficiaries, the latter taking into consideration of the size of the beneficiary groups, with extra points being given to interventions that target women, children and people with disabilities.

Each shortlisted nomination is discussed by the awards jury in order to share perspectives. Each juror then assigns a sore to each nominee with regards to each criterion, with the total score obtainable for each criterion being 200, making for a maximum possible score of 200 by each juror for each criterion. After the sharing of perspectives, each juror assigns his or her own score for each aspect. However where an individual jurors score is more than 30 points higher or lower than the average for that nominee in a particular aspect a joint review is held and where the other jurors consider it necessary a reassessment is called for by the juror whose score is so markedly different. But if the juror stands hos or her ground, it is accepted for the sake of cohesion within the Jury as a group.

4.) THE JURY OF EXPERTS
A special seven member Jury of Experts will be constituted for each of the five zones and each of the two specially delineated cities. Each Jury will comprise of six recognized experts in private enterprise and/or public institutional activities (both governance and performance inclusive) in that particular zone and one expert included for national level knowledge, this to enable the Jury compare zonal enterprise/institution capacity conduct and performance with national standards. Jurists will be selected for their generalist knowledge rather than industry specific knowledge to forestall bias by members towards nominees from particular industries in their considerations for cross-sector awards.

However the identities of each Jury will not be made public until the end of the awards initiative to prevent lobbying of Jurists by nominees.

B) PUBLIC VOTING

Public voting will be done through a dedicated platform provided by the organizers for this purpose., The voting public will be advised to consider the aforementioned five core criteria used by the Jury of Experts in making their voting decisions although inevitably sheer popularity will be the overriding influence in actual voting decisions.

Voting will be done on a national rather than zonal basis to accommodate the votes of regional stakeholders domiciled outside of the region. Multiple voting is allowed.

A public announcement in the media and on the dedicated website for the awards scheme will inform as to the timelines for opening and closing of the voting process and the acceptable modes and processes for voting. The ensure the integrity of the voting process it will be handled by an independent contracted team and the results will be verified by a separate reputable indigenous audit firm.