Finance is not neutral. Every loan, every investment shapes lives, communities and ecosystems. In Nigeria, a country where climate vulnerability, extractive industries, and governance challenges collide, the choices of banks and financial institutions carry enormous weight. They can accelerate inequality and environmental harm, or they can drive a just and sustainable future. Global expectations around Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) standards are rising fast. Financial institutions everywhere are being called to account. Not just for profits, but for the social and environmental footprints of their decisions. Yet in Nigeria, how far have banks stepped up to this responsibility?

Fair Finance Nigeria (FFNG), the Nigerian chapter of Fair Finance International (FFI), conducted the country's first-ever systematic review of sustainability and responsible finance policies among leading Nigerian banks titled “How Four Banks in Nigeria Are Responding to Global ESG Compliance Standards”. Using the globally recognized Fair Finance Guide Methodology, which benchmarks institutions against more than 400 international standards, this assessment examines how four major banks (Access Bank, United Bank For Africa, Standard Chartered Bank and Zenith Bank) integrate sustainability across eight critical themes: biodiversity, climate change, corruption, gender equality, human rights, labour rights, taxation, and transparency & accountability.

The findings are clear: Nigerian banks policies are just enough to meet regulatory requirements, but are rarely going beyond. Scores across most themes remain low to moderate. While there is progress on labour rights, and anti-corruption, glaring gaps persist in climate action, biodiversity protection, tax responsibility, and transparency. These gaps are not just technical, they represent the real risks to many people in Nigeria and a missed opportunity for leadership at least from Nigeria’s financial sector.

The current 2012 Nigerian Sustainability Banking Principles (NSBP) are painfully outdated, creating a loophole that allows banks to avoid genuine sustainable operations.

The FFNG Coalition—comprising BudgIT, Policy Alert, CISLAC, CODE, STEPS, and Oxfam—is urgently calling on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN), the Bank Directors Association of Nigeria (BDAN), and bank executives to convene a multi-stakeholder roundtable. It is time to modernize the sector's ESG frameworks to align with global standards and demand that banks immediately move beyond "tick-box" compliance to genuine corporate finance accountability.

Download the full report here.