Since inception about three decades ago, 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 immediate past President and Chairman of Council of ANAN, Professor Benjamin Osisioma, bares his mind on the complementary role the body is playing to reposition the accounting profession in Nigeria. PAUL OGBUOKIRI brings the excerpts

ANAN has been around for about 30 years, what informed the decision to establish it 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 a 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 at- tributes 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 society. They engaged roadside tuition houses where they took exams and if you passed, you became a professional.

Unlike medicine, engineering, architecture, law etc where you have a body of knowledge that has 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 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 the classroom. That is exactly what one of the ICAN top men said then. I retorted, you can learn medicine in the classroom, 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 ac- counting 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 to be 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.

You mentioned ICAN and it mode of raising accounting professionals, what are you doing differently from the ICAN system?

If you look at the system that ICAN was running, they had their foundation exams, they had the intermediate, and 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. 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 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 a nine months professionalisation 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 on you.

Can you imagine 3,000 candidates gathered under one umbrella? 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 pro- cess of teaching, we have a well-structured programme that has been looked at, at- tested to by the IFAC, by the DFID, CPA of Ireland, that have helped us work on it. So, we prepare students who will go out there and make a difference.

So what we have 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 percent of directors of finance and supplies, accountants general, auditors general in the local government, states of Nigeria, and in the Federal Government 80 percent of them belong to ANAN. At some point over 90 percent going to 95 percent 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 even helped to make ICAN members as professors, helping to fashion them, create them and if anybody doubts it, I can provide data but I won’t go into that.

What do you think is the greatest change confronting the country?

One of the greatest challenges is finance. Within this past year, we had a fraud summit, and we reached out to all the relevant agencies, involving EFCC, ICPC, NFIU, UN, IMF and we gathered them together to brainstorm and see how we can address issues of fraud in our land.

We are happy we have achieved a lot of successes; at least we have gone some way in building structures. When I talk about digital, we have a digital hub, though not perfect enough, we have spent a lot of money on it, where we expect to have 10,000 students in an examination condition and we still use it to teach the students. So, we are coming.

Could that be your contribution to the anti-corruption fight?

Yes, you could say so, beyond that, let me put it this way. My experience as president of ANAN has taught me that the issue of corruption is far more embedded than we know. It almost makes me pessimistic about religion. I am saying this because we are accountants, we are corporate gate-keepers, we are the people who watch over the resources of the nation. Accountants face the same challenges every Nigerian faces, this is a character issue.

We must come to a point and resolve that we must do what is right. But the most critical part of this is that those who are wrong are those who will gather to attack the per- son who is doing the right thing. So, in the end, when you decide to toe the right line, you may become the culprit at the end of time. And it makes it difficult to get people who are prepared to fight the battle. And of course, I have faced issues of ethno religious cleavages.

Sometimes, when you do something, they accuse you of favouring East, West, North and sometimes, and all kinds of things. Sometimes, they say you are being religiously biased. I have faced them, we are called to serve and we will serve no matter what they say.

Is our Debt profile sustainable?

I have seen that in a situation where you manage the affairs of a state well, the debt profile will take a downward trend. I have come to realize that if you fix your mind on something, you will get there. What gives rise to debt profile is when your expenditure far exceeds your revenue, you borrow to make up.

So, if you curtail your expenditure, and you increase your revenue profile, you stabilize the economy. That is what it calls for and I think that is what we need. It may not be done overnight but it is something that is doable.