Interview 30
Daily Times Nigeria Monday, February 23, 2015
ICAN’s impact on Nigeria’s economy unquantifiable – Ajaegbu The impact of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) on the nation’s economy in the past 50 years is unquantifiable. This was the submission of Mr. Chidi Ajaegbu, president of the institute, which will be celebrating its Golden Jubilee this year, to the management team of Daily Times, who paid a courtesy visit to the institute recently. He spoke on the institute’s contributions to the economy and harped on the need to invest more in the educational system, while he highlighted some of the institute’s processes, challenges and initiatives. Excerpts. What does ICAN represent as an institution and how has the journey been so far? The institute was enabled by an Act of parliament in 1965 with just 250 members and today, we have over 39,000 members. Until 1972, the examinations were being moderated by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales; one of the foremost accounting bodies in the world. In 1977, our institute was one of the pioneer bodies of accountants to form the International Federation of Accountants and between 1984 and 1986, we were able to produce the Vice President of that global regulator of our profession in the person of Chief Olu Falae. Today, that august body regulates accountants in over 125 jurisdictions (countries), and is responsible for over 2.5 million accountants worldwide. Apart from that, we also have members of ICAN on the board and committees of that world regulator. What it means is that ICAN is being benchmarked, with our standards being accepted worldwide. To show that we are international players, in the last World Accountancy Conference, which was held in Rome, last year, we had some of our members presenting papers; we sponsored a research, in collaboration with other researchers, on new ways of reporting financial statements. ICAN will be 50 years this year and the institute is not only dominant in the sub-region and Africa, but, is a respected body, glob-
“Our rules require that you must write a petition under oath, because we don’t want to be wasting our time with frivolities. So you have to send the petition under oath to the Registrar, who sends it to one of the institute’s six investigative panels”
Ajaegbu
ally. The body is a global brand and three years ago, because we are passionate about standards, we got into a tripartite agreement between us, World Bank, the same Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales, to review our processes, in order to make sure that we are, continually, meeting those global standards. They came up with recommendations and one of those recommendations was that we needed to obscure our study materials and review them every four or five years. We are very passionate about standards and whatever we do, we want to match the best that is available in the universe. How do you groom a child to become a future chartered accountant? If you want your child to be a chartered accountant, I think it is important to start from the very beginning, prudence and accountability are important. If you give your child, maybe, N5 or N10, it is important that the child does, what we call returns; you must account for how you spend your money.
You begin to imbibe that culture of accountability and, over time, from primary school, you can now focus on this wonderful profession. Is the pass rate for those taking the ICAN examinations rising or declining? It fluctuates and the truth is that the quality of preparation and the quality of the students determine the pass rate. We have standards, we don’t give out certificates if we think you can’t defend the band, and we are also aware that the quality of education is declining and for us to defend our band, we must meet a certain level of standards. And now that we run subject by subject, for example, in our last certificate case study, we had over 60 per cent in that case study for that particular course, but in some cases, you can also have 10 per cent, so you need to prepare. And our processes are foolproof, in the sense that nothing goes wrong. For example, you have 10 questions on a particular examination paper, you cannot mark more than one paper, even if the script is 10,000, you can only mark Question One. I
cannot start giving all our procedures, but it is so time-tested and rigorous that nothing can go wrong with it. We also use statistical method to make sure that everything is in order. If we have extreme cases of either pass or failure, we investigate them and finally, a candidate has the right to call for the re-marking of his or her scripts. If you think you did better than the outcome of your results, you can bring in your own experts. We will give them the scripts and the marking scheme and ask them to mark your scripts, we are that transparent. What is the role of accountants in the fight against corruption and what has the institute done to sanction members found culpable in sharp practices, specifically, involving the fuel subsidy scam? I think what, probably, addressed that question is the lack of information and awareness. The enabling Act of the institute, clearly spells out the disciplinary processes, meaning that you are to have the petition under oath.
Our rules require that you must write a petition under oath, because we don’t want to be wasting our time with frivolities. So you have to send the petition under oath to the Registrar, who sends it to one of the institute’s six investigative panels. It will investigate the allegation, conclude whether there is a case to answer by this member or not. If the panel determines that there is a case to answer, then it is taken to a tribunal; I am the chairman of the tribunal, its equivalent in the judicial hierarchy is the high court. Whatever we decide in the tribunal, can only be appealed by the affected member at the Court of Appeal. It will be wrong for you to expect that we will just jump into an investigation because some allegations were published in the newspapers. For example, on the question of the fuel subsidy scam, if we get a written petition, of just one sheet of paper, addressed to me, the institute will investigate. But it is not in tandem with our processes for us to read on the pages of newspapers that somebody had stolen money and we then start inviting them, No, we don’t do that. We also have what we call a whistleblower fund which was created with a seed fund of N50million; why we had to create CONTINUED ON PAGE 31