ICAN Accredits 25 Tertiary Institutions, Tuition Centres for Training Accountants

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) has accredited the accounting programmes of 14 universities, three polytechnics and eight tuition training centres, which would exempt their graduates from participating in foundational courses of the ICAN.

The President of ICAN, Dr. Innocent Iweka Okwuosa, explained that the essence of the accreditation was to assure the institute that the curriculum of the universities and polytechnics met its requirements to warrant such exemptions.

Okwuosa, gave the explanation during the “Award of Accreditation/ Recognition Certificates of Tertiary

Institutions and Training Centres Ceremony,” which took place yesterday in Lagos.

Among the tertiary institutions that were accredited are University of Lagos, Trinity University Lagos, Abia State University, Akwa Ibom State University, Nasarawa State University, Veritas University Abuja, Institute of Management and Technology, Enugu and Nigerian Army School of Finance, Apapa, Lagos State, etc.

He said; “If your university or polytechnic is accredited you will start ICAN's programme at the skills level. It means that all the subjects at the foundation level will be waved for you.

“But we have to be sure that you have passed through the same level of proficiency that would merit your exemption from all the subjects at our foundation level.”

Okwuosa added: “Accreditation enables us to give exemptions to degree holders on some of the subjects ordinarily we would have expected them to write in our initial professional development (IPD) before they become our members and we want to make sure that standard is upheld by the universities, polytechnics and training centres.

“As we are aware different universities and institutions have different challenges and we do not equate all of them to be the same. Therefore, we have to ensure that they meet ICAN's standard through accreditations that we confer.”

He also differentiated the ICAN's accreditation from those granted by the National University Commission (NUC) and the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) by emphasising that ICAN's accreditation is solely focused on accounting syllabus of these educational institutions.

He added that the institute has also introduced another level of accreditation for tertiary institutions under the Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA), which would enable graduates of these institutions to “proceed to the final level and write only five subjects under the present arrangement.

“What we trying to achieve is to ensure that we address developments in the labour market in Nigeria. Everybody is complaining that graduates no longer fit the necessary skills that are required in the labour market.

“So, the MRA is a tripartite arrangement involving the university and polytechnics, the ICAN and employers.

“We ensure that the curriculum for the degrees will mirror ICAN's syllabus. And there will be employers that will provide internship for these graduates and later employ them.

“That is how it is done in England and Wales and that is what we want to introduce,” Okwuosa said.