Telecel Ghana’s CEO, Patricia Obo-Nai, has advised organisations navigating ownership changes, restructuring, or rebranding to prioritise strong governance controls as guardrails against operational loopholes during the transition.

Delivering the keynote at the Institute of Internal Auditors Ghana 2025 Governance Forum on the theme, Governance Amidst Transition, Ing. Obo-Nai shared insights and lessons from Telecel Ghana’s transition from Vodafone Ghana between 2023 and 2024.

“Transition, uncomfortable as it may feel, is a great teacher. It reveals whether we built institutions on solid grounds or on convenient assumptions,” she told the audience.

“One of the biggest governance failures in any transition is assuming old controls will automatically fit into a new structure. They rarely do.”

The IIA Governance Forum is an annual platform for advancing good governance, accountability, and effective internal audit practice across both the public and private sectors.

It brings together senior executives, board members, risk and audit professionals, policymakers, and thought leaders to share best practices and equip them with insights and tools needed to build resilient institutions.

In her address, Ing. Obo-Nai described how leadership established a Risk Council, a cross-functional team drawn from across the business, to conduct risk reviews and audit sessions.

She said the telco integrated internal auditors into the redesign process from the first day of the transition, and this decision prevented control gaps that often haunt businesses after major acquisitions and mergers.

“Our transition was a major shift across every part of the business. It was about replacing many systems, creating and localising new roles, revising and redocumenting processes and embedding new ways of working without compromising our pledge to employees, customers and other stakeholders.”

She said Telecel Ghana implemented a Control Continuity Plan to track financial, operational and reputational risks daily and treated data migration as its most critical exposure.

The outcome, she said, was one of the smoothest transitions in business, marked by the company’s lowest attrition levels during any major shift.

Telecel Group’s 2023 acquisition of Vodafone’s 70 per cent stake in Ghana Telecommunications Company Limited set in motion a major transition for Ghana’s second-largest telecom giant.

The rebranding to Telecel Ghana was completed in 2024, with a renewed push for investment and innovation towards an advanced digital future.

Ing. Obo-Nai urged Ghanaian corporate leaders to rethink their approach to transition as a defining moment in leadership and governance, offering three lessons applicable to any major transition across industries.

“Embedding audit early, confronting internal cultural uncertainty head on, and protecting data with uncompromising discipline, makes the difference between a transition that strengthens a company and one that weakens it,” she added.

Convened annually by the Ghana chapter of the Institute of Internal Auditors, an international professional association that promotes and develops the practice of internal auditing, the Governance Forum this year spotlighted agile governance models for navigating economic and institutional transformation.

Through expert panels, capacity-building sessions, and peer exchanges, the Forum drives home the importance of transparency, accountability, and internal audit functions in safeguarding institutional integrity and steering national development.