First Bank Kicks Off  ‘2024 CR&S Week’ with Tree Planting Event

*Initiative targets planting 50,000 trees by 2025

Sunday Ehigiator

Nigeria’s premier financial institution, First Bank Group, commenced its 2024 Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability (CR&S) Week yesterday, with a tree planting event held at the Lekki Conservation Centre (LCC), Lagos.
The event, led by the bank’s Chief Executive Officer, Olusegun Alebiosu, marks the beginning of a week-long celebration of the bank’s commitment to sustainable economic, social, and environmental growth and development.

In his remarks, Alebiosu highlighted the bank’s achievements over the past seven years, impacting over one million people and 300 charities, NGOs, foundations, health institutions, and schools across Nigeria and its subsidiaries worldwide.
He emphasised the bank’s dedication to environmental sustainability, particularly through its ‘Tree Planting’ initiative, which aims to plant 50,000 trees by 2025.
According to him, “The CR&S Week is an annual event during which special activities are dedicated to promoting sustainable economic, social, and environmental growth and development in Nigeria and across our subsidiaries all over the world.

“In the last seven years since we commenced the CR&S Week celebration, more than one million people and 300 charities, NGOs, foundations, health institutions and schools have been impacted across Nigeria and our subsidiaries in Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gambia, DRC, Senegal, Guinea and the United Kingdom.
“In 2023 alone, we partnered multiple organisations and impacted about 60,000 lives with various SPARK (i.e. Start Performing Acts of Random Kindness) amplification projects carried out in 60 orphanage homes, 20 schools, and several hospitals.

“Remarkably, most of these projects were championed and implemented by volunteer FirstBank staff through the Employee Giving & Volunteering Scheme.
“Our SPARK activities for last year however climaxed with the kickoff of the ‘Tree Planting’ initiative which was introduced to spread the acts of kindness beyond humans, to the environment itself, thus showing kindness to nature and mother earth in appreciation for accommodating human existence and our various never-ending activities.

“This year, we aim at planting 30,000 trees across the country, and we already commenced implementation with the support of the students of Government Secondary School, Karshi, Abuja yesterday, 21 August 2024.
“Today, we aim at consolidating our efforts here in Lekki Conservation Centre to plant more trees and inch closer to our target for 2024. It is always a delight working with your team and I thank you for constantly dedicating your time and resources to ensuring that this project succeeds.

“As a Bank, we will not renege on our commitment to ensuring that ‘Tree Planting’ becomes a fundamental activity in the celebration of our annual CR&S Week as this will help us to continue to play our roles in ensuring a cleaner, safer, purer, healthier and ultimately, wealthier environment that will outlive us and the generations to come after us.”

In his remark, LCC’s Director-General, Prof. Mathew Onoja appreciated and lauded First Bank’s effort and its contributions towards improving the country’s ecosystem, and its green recovery initiatives.
According to him, “The story of the ‘Green Recovery’ Nigeria will not be complete without the story of the LCC. Today, after several years of conservation, the LCC has become a replica of what used to be Victoria Island to Epe, until we turned it into a complete jungle.
“We have this place to be able to show us that nature will always reclaim what belongs to it. We have a laboratory here to show people what nature can do only if you allow it.

“Over the years we have seen that Nigeria’s forest cover has depreciated. At independence, we had about 30 to 40 per cent forest cover in the Nigeria landscape. But over time, it has dwindled to less than 10 per cent.
“We have so much destroyed our forest and also didn’t manage them properly and that is why we created the ‘Green Recovery Nigeria’, where we seek to recover Nigeria’s forest cover back to at least 25 per cent as recommended by the United Nations Environment Program.

“And we are very happy that First Bank has seen and caught up with that vision and has come to join us.
“First Bank is a leading financial organisation in Nigeria and truly the first in all the things that it does. We are happy to have you onboard.”