ICAN, ANAN need synergy to create global impact — ANAN president

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ICAN, ANAN need synergy to create global impact — ANAN president

Since establishment in 1993, the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria, ANAN has been viewed by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, ICAN as a rival body. In this interview, the President of ANAN, Professor Benjamin Osisioma and the CEO of the association, Dr, Kayode Olushola Fasua bared their minds on the complementary role the body is playing to reposition the accounting profession not just in Nigeria but on the continent of Africa.

They also spoke on the forward looking and proactive innovations brought to bear on both public and private sectors, how it has solved over 50% of the problems of training and producing accountants in the whole of Africa through its College and University and what ANAN and ICAN need to do to make global impact and dictate the pace among others. Excerpts.

By Emmanuel Elebeke

What prompted the establishment of ANAN as a professional body and what are the factors that have contributed its growth?

Professionals are the elite working group in any economy, in the sense that they have gone through higher education and are regarded as having much dignity and respect. They have a social contract with the public and they have high sense of responsibility that they owe the society they serve.

They subscribe to a code of ethics that is higher than what the ordinary man/woman would subject him/herself to. They serve based on what you can afford to pay, they serve you looking at the interest of the society. That is what professionalism is all about.

That is why we emphasize three key attributes of professionalism above every other — competence, discipline and integrity. We ask ourselves, how is accountancy contributing to the future of the nation? Look at accountancy the way it has been. As a young undergraduate from 1973 to 1977, we never heard anything about professional accounting. Then, it was only ICAN that was a professional accounting body in the country and then, they were not paying attention to universities, we did not hear about professionals.

Then we thought professionalism, is about guiding us to earn a living in the society. They engaged roadside tuition houses where they took exams and if you passed, you become a professional.

Unlike medicine, engineering, architecture, law etc where you have a body of knowledge that have grown to become a course of study in the university.

You go in, study for 3 years, 4 years, in the case of medicine, 6 years. Then you go to the law school, you go to internship, all these preparations, why were we not doing it in accounting?

The argument then was that accounting was a very practical subject, you can’t learn anything in classroom. That is exactly what one of the ICAN top men said then. I retorted, you can learn medicine in the class room, is accounting more practical than medicine?

In medicine, if you make a mistake, somebody dies. In law if you make a mistake somebody loses his freedom, how can accounting be more practical than these ones.

So, we said no, something is missing, we began to see that it looks as if our elder brother, ICAN, seems to us was more concerned with protecting the interest of their members than fostering the growth of a professional field.

The discipline was not growing, all they did was to make sure there were no incursions from other places, and that is why I keep emphasizing, each time when we meet in PAFA, Pan African Federation of Accountants; I made that emphasis that we must not only play a protective role for the profession, we must also play a constructive role, extend the frontiers of the profession.

These were the things that informed the roles our founding fathers played. They came into the field to see how they can play a more active role.

ICAN system

If you look at the system that ICAN was running, they had their foundation exams, they had the intermediate, they had professional 1, and 2, 3. That examination pattern was introduced in 1884 in Europe. After more than 100years, it has not changed. And they did not have a system like ours in mind, when they designed it. But ours is a growing economy, a young economy. What are the needs of this economy? How do we produce professionals to satisfy the need? These are the things we had in mind when we were fashioning out which way to go.

I come from academia where we grow people like we grow trees. We teach people before we examine. Training by examination is a misnomer, it is not training at all. And we say he who does not teach, lacks the authority to examine. There is no moral authority to examine, so these were the things at the back of our minds.

Raising the bar — the ANAN way,

When they now began to fashion out another approach, I said take accounting professionals off the streets, you will never see any place we are hawking ANAN certificate, no! You go to our college, after you have graduated from an NUC,m or NBTE accredited institution, either university or polytechnic, you are qualified, then we will admit you into our college just like the Law School, where you will undergo nine months professionalization programme. We will let you know what we want from you, we will let you know how to improve your contributions to society.

Then at the end, you come on and we take you into the place of work. Then two years practical experience as an accountant. Then at the end of it, we induct you into the membership of the profession.

You can see it is a long series of activities and programmes and we feel that after you have come out, you owe the society a duty and there is a debt you come to pay, you make sure that you leave this society better than you have found it. And if you don’t, you have not understood where you are. That is about the experience of how we came about and the drive we are involved in.

ANAN has continued to raise the bar of excellence through nurturing and mentoring of professional accountants and other numerous services it renders; can you highlight some of these services and greatest achievements?

Well you see, we call ourselves a Premium Brand of Choice. The first foothold is to offer the Nigerian accounting graduate a choice. He now has two trajectories, you can go the ICAN route, take your professional exams, pass and become an associate of ICAN or come to the college, we prepare you and send you out into the world, you go that route and you become a professional accountant of ANAN mold. We are not saying that the ICAN system does not work or is not right but this is the one we adopt. And with this approach, you begin to see immediately what we offer.

I was Director General of our College for four years, and when I was there I used to tell the students; you are a degree holder, that is even enough for you to contribute your own quota to the development of our nation, you don’t need any additional thing to do but we have brought you here to impact you. Can you imagine 3,000 candidates gathered in one structure. They come to the college, interacting with one another. You learn a lot from what others are doing that you never did. It changes your outlook, refines your outlook.

One step further, we now go into the process of teaching, we have a well-structured programme that has been looked at, attested to by the IFAC, by the DFID, CPA of Ireland, that have helped us work on it. So, we prepare student who will go out there and make a difference.

So what have we achieved, we have tried to impact on the public life of the nation in a very profound manner. If you look around, we have 80 to 85% of directors of finance and supplies, accountants general, auditors general in the local government, states of Nigeria, and in the federal government 80% of them belong to ANAN. At some point over 90 percent going to 95% of professors of accounting in Nigeria belong to ANAN.

Right now we can say it has been infused a little because we don’t have up to that proportion, why is that? we are not greedy, we are not selfish, we have helped to even making ICAN members as professors, helping to fashion them, create them and if anybody doubt it, I can provide data but I won’t go into that.

Impact on academia, industry, public sector

We have impacted on the public sector, we have impacted on academia, we are also impacting on industries. There is a growing inclusion into the industry.

Agreed that ICAN started in 1965, that is when they had their charter, our own came 1993 that is almost 30years gap.

There is no doubt they have been in this business longer than us and it created a measure of monopoly for them even in the private sector.

You go to the private sector, they are in trend there, we are also getting in there and today most of the capacity that are forward looking, innovative, proactive, they have their roots in ANAN because we keep challenging our people. We are never satisfied with whatever level we have achieved. Then we have a College, that College is the first and only one in black Africa, when we started it, people said where will you get money to build a college, how will you fund it, who will be the examiners?

Today, the IFAC has accepted that it is one of the best ways of training accountants.

We went to Marrakesh in Morocco for African Congress of Accountants in 2018, Dr. Fasua was the Director-General of the College then and at that meeting, he shared with them what we do at the college and one of the African delegates just stood up and said, that your college has solved over 50% of the problems of training accountants in the whole of Africa.

And right now we have students in that college from six, seven French speaking African countries. Because we now have a French laboratory in that college.

They come from Cameroon, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Togo, Benin Republic, they are all there. We are breaking

new grounds, we are not going there to create a name, we are just doing what we need to do. We are creating a brand.

For every profession there are challenges, what are the challenges and how have you been able to weather the storm?

Number one is finance, number two is public acceptance, which has led to some of the adjustment we are doing now. Number three is the ethical worth or values of your members. And before you know it people will point fingers at us. We have some of your members doing this and that. You teach, you instruct, you build up and they end up doing things that are embarrassing. These are part of the challenges we face.

There is no act of reading a man construction on the face and you just don’t know and there is no way we can open a person head and put in ethics.

We can only preach it and teach it and instruct it and leave the people to put it to work and when they don’t follow the way, it rubs off on us.

We have a N850million Admin block that we are hoping to take possession of by this September, we have a new gate house, we are developing a new campus for the college besides the old one and all these things cost money. I would want the government to bend over backwards and say these people are doing some of the work we should be doing and invest in it.

I look forward to all these agencies of government, big bodies like NNPC, Ports Authority, Customs and different bodies, NIMASA, Banks, telecom companies etc, why don’t they bring some of the money and let’s produce the capacity that can drive this economy. That is what we are doing.

Acceptability by the public is another challenge. You do all that you want to do, they will say no, no, no you are not chartered because they do not understand the meaning of chartered.

We have a charter and that charter is the ANAN Act of 1993 signed into law by government .

There are only two professional bodies of accountancy in this country that have a charter, ANAN and ICAN. But as far as people are concerned, they say you are not chartered.

And that is why we say ok let’s follow the law, that is why we introduced an amendment to our Act. We want now to be known as a Chartered National Accounting body. And let it be on record.

We are not daunted, we keep pressing on, we keep making impact, we feel in the end, it will come by how much we have touched the lives of ordinary Nigerian.

Security is another issue. People keep wondering why are we in Plateau.

And I usually say that when we started in 1979, very few state governments took us seriously but Governor Solomon Lar of Plateau State took us seriously.

One of the members from Bassa LGA of Plateau state helped us to get a place where our college is now situated; a 382 acres of land for 20,000 naira and we paid and invited the governor to come and flag us the establishment of that college and when he came, he ordered that the money be returned to us that it is a free gift from Plateau State Governments to us.

That is how we got that land, I usually call them men who saw tomorrow. Governor Lar was there, the governor of Bauchi also sent his commissioner to represent him there and they kick started this thing.

For so long, it seems as if we were not going to make any progress, nothing was happening. We didn’t have money .One of the major problem that we find frustrating is in term of security, people don’t want to go to plateau state but then that is why we are trying to have a foothold at the capital city.

That will still be our College headquarters in Jos but we can also have some programmes going on here, so that is why we will be building on the two campuses.

Are there disciplinary measures you have to discipline your erring members and what are you doing in terms of welfare to help members who have dedicated everything about them to this association?

We are committed to helping our members who are battling with the issues of acceptability. The secretary of the federal government some years ago wrote a circular to all Tax offices in Nigeria and said ‘’ANAN members are being side lined on matters that they have explicit powers in their law to carry out’’ and directed that they should put an end to it.

So, we fight this battle, just get us evidence. We will intervene and anywhere we have an impression that our members are being maltreated, just give us something to fight it, we will fight it and we did not start today and we will be certain you are on the right part before we make sure you get your dues.

On discipline?

Like I said part of the problems we have is the fact that we live in a society where standards and values have gone to the dogs. In fact at times it becomes difficult to say whether you are sane. How can I be in a system whereby what I know is wrong is being put out as right and you wonder what to do.

Before we punish members, we set up a panel of investigation who will look into the matter, based on their reports, we will now set up a tribunal, which the minister of Justice will appoint a representative and the decisions of tribunal cannot be turned except by the court of appeal, our tribunal has the authority of the state high court. We try the case. And we have done it before.

We want to be sure that we are not just joining the crowd, that’s why when we receive a case we want to find out, had the EFCC concluded this investigations?, had the court of law intervened?, these are the things you weigh up before you take a step but we try the best we can, it is not easy.

Let me also say that even here in ANAN, if we cannot put our house in order, we have no right to talk about equity, justice, and fair play outside. We begin with ourselves. We make sure we operate a system that is sane and that’s why if you look at the way we operate in ANAN, we are very careful about a number of things.

We have well defined procedures; we have an EXCO of six members from six geopolitical zones in Nigeria. These are the things you consider so that you make sure that you work fairly and equitably. Even if you have best people in the world, you can only give us one.

So, we are making the best effort we can, I wish we can say we have achieved 100% success by no means, we keep trying.

You started a college, now a university, what effort is the association putting in place even as far as secondary school to reach out to the younger generation to show interest?

Right now, catch them young project operates mainly from our branch networks. Like here in the FCT, the FCT branch every year goes out to one secondary school or the other to hold symposium, seminars, workshops, teaching them things accounting concepts.

They go to IDP camps, charitable homes to let them also know about accounting.

Since we lean on universities and polytechnics, we are also building on the foundation that these institutions are building which is a very vital part. It’s like getting the secondary schools to feed the universities.

Unlike the our sister body, we don’t go on accreditation. We feel that if the NUC and NBTE have organised accreditation visits to the higher institution and they have taken more steps of accepting that our members should be on their accreditation teams, we don’t go on accreditation but we are doing things to hold their interest. We have this National Undergraduate Essay Competition we organise for national undergraduates to get them involved in what we are doing.

The national undergraduates essay competition has been on since 1997/98 and every year we pick up a topic and throw it open to accounting undergraduates and they write essay on it. We give them gifts, like candidate that comes first get free tuition to the College for entire year and certificate, second receives partial tuition and certificate and others etc.

We also visit the universities, we don’t do accreditation but we do sensitization.

We go to the various accounting departments and tell them about the Nigerian College of Accountancy and ANAN, etc.

What are your projections going forward?

We need to concretize in areas we have already made headways, like our university, we were allowed to set up a post-graduate university, we want to run, maybe after five years or so, a normal university, so that we will begin to compete with the other universities in production of first grade graduates, so that we will be feeding the professional body even as other institutions are also feeding us.

We want to also build up the capacity of ordinary Nigerians, we want to break new grounds in the continental body. We have had a lot of cooperation with ICAN.

If ANAN and ICAN stand together, we will dictate the pace of the profession in Africa and indeed we will make global impact. We want to see that come to pass.

There are also other spin-off areas we want to explore. When accounting started, it was holistic and simple with six areas of emphasis: financial, Core Corporate accounting, Cost and Management accounting, Auditing and Taxation, Government Accounting. And these areas are becoming full blown disciplines on their own. Taxation has cut off and now an institution of its own. Forensics will soon become an independent body. These will help to develop the sector and enable us get a good grasp of the nature of the profession in the days ahead.

We also want to be known as a one-stop area for professionalism in accounting. We want to build a library. We call it a presidential library here in this building. Students can come from anywhere. We have virtual capacity and want to impact on accounting knowledge globally. We want to impact in this profession for a very long time.