BUSINESS Poor accounting knowledge breeds financial indiscipline –Adebisi
Dr Joseph Femi Adebisi, Director General of the Nigerian College of Accountancy (NCA), the training arm of the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN), says in this interview that high education is conferring greater influence on accountants over corrupt officials. Excerpts:
What is wisdom behind the establishment of the Nigerian College of Accountancy?
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Our founding fathers resolved that accountancy in Nigeria should have a unified and scientific approach. They felt accountancy should be learnt within the four walls of classrooms where we can teach the theory and practical, not that anybody would just stay by the roadside, mount a signboard and begin to claim to be training accountants. We don’t want a situation in which everybody hustles all over the place to present five, 10 candidates for examination.
ANAN prefers the uniform training system. We have a collegiate arrangement whereby people gather and rub minds for at least one year, interact and be taught by the same set of people and exposed to the same practical experiences. This can’t be achieved when you are scattered everywhere.
What are you doing to ensure academic quality in the college?
Before I came, some people registered here as full-time students but worked in Abuja, Kano or Port Harcourt. I asked, ‘You say you are a full-time student here but you work in Abuja or Port Harcourt, is it possible? How can you work in Kano and come to lectures in Jos every day? It’s not possible.’ To stop that practice, we installed a biometric machine. When you come for our lecture, you thumbprint. That’s attendance. It can’t be manipulated. We resolved that only students who achieved 75 percent of attendance write our exams. People thought it could not happen, but that’s how we turned over 1,600 students from full-time to part-time.
On campus now, we have only 846 students that are fulltime. These are either right here in our hostels or live in places not far from the campus here. Students have to be made to accept that discipline is vital for the profession.
How many students are on part-time now?
For the current session, we have about 2,400 on part-time (meaning over 3,000 students full and part-time).
What is the requirement for student admission into the college?
HND or BSc in Accounting, for a professional class. They are admitted after their national service (NYSC). We have another stream of students. We call them conversion students, meaning those who have qualifications in related fields, such as Banking and Finance, Economics, Business Administration, Mathematics and Statistics.
First of all, we have to convert and so on. But here we have an accounting lab. The laboratory is equipped with software in preparing financial statements. We take our students through them so that they can fit in when they go out there. Then, physically they will see documentary evidences like payment vouchers, tax return forms. They will see our audit working papers submitted to us for our practical training by professional colleagues who are practicing.
We also organise AIT (Accounting in Training) and ICT (Information and Communication Technology) workshops. These are intensive training programmes to make them able to appreciate computer as part of our tools. Additionally, we have a French laboratory where we teach French, so that when you finish from here and you want to association which is a part of the establishment of ANAN itself. It is part of the enabling act that set up ANAN. It was spelt out in the act that the college is the training arm of ANAN. It’s a law that we cannot go out of. Our sister body, ICAN, does not have that. Even if they have where they are training people, it’s not in their own law. We are the one given the authority to have a training arm, and that’s why you don’t have two colleges of accountancy in Nigeria. You can have accounting lecture houses and faculties everywhere, but when it comes to college of accountancy, it’s one.
As a trainer of accountants, what is your thought on corruption and the role accountants play in it or which they can play to mitigate it?
In evaluating corruption, we must start from our individual selves. As journalists, do you accept inducements to doctor stories? At the college here we are working to build a vanguard of professional accountants able to lay good examples at their desks. We are building in our students the culture of courage that makes them stand to their bosses and tell them this is not the way to go.
This is the point people often make: how does an accountant tell his superior how to go in matters that surpass the rudiments of accounting?
Before ANAN, professional accountants could not go beyond the level of chief accountant in Nigeria. Your promotion stopped at chief accountant, or financial controller at the highest. You could not become a director. This was partly because most accountants those days didn’t have a degree. If you don’t have a degree, there are levels you could not pass in the civil service. So, even when they reached the position of chief accountant, they had to be taking directive from someone who never chartered in any field. Maybe those giving the directive had BSc Economics or even BA History and became director, and you have to be subjected to whatever he says. But with the advent of ANAN, with your degree, you can get to the level of director. When you now have professional qualification, it makes it faster.
So, now that we are having professional accountants that get to be directors, executive directors of companies, financial directors of companies, we are coming up and becoming increasingly able to influence decisions and check corrupt acts. And opportunities increase as you acquire more qualifications. For example, I have a practising firm, I’m a lecturer, and I have high education. If one doesn’t work, I take another. If I advise you and you don’t take my advice, I move to where my advice will count, or I quit to my private practice. By reason of their high educational qualification and the professional knowledge they gain here, accountants can stand tall and argue their case out.
So, accountancy is now a management function?
You can say it is an executive function. You can give advice and you can direct.
You were on Bauchi Ring Road, Angwan Rukuba, a Jos North. Now, you are here in Kwall, Bassa LGA, many kilometres from Jos. What informed your movement to a place so far from Jos city?
We were very much on Bauchi Ring Road (as the process of developing this place continued) when we got a matching order last year to relocate to this place. We moved to this permanent site in June 2013. The decision to move here, away from Jos, derived from the desire of our founding fathers to remove the cosmopolitan disturbances of the crowded ring road temporary location.
Students and staff should not be distracted by not just noise but also by the penchant of people to move away to somewhere else when they should be around campus. This environment is such that once you are here, you remain here. This place is quiet, serene, and secluded. It suits learning.