By Godfrey AKON
As Nigerians await the appointment of ministers by President Bola Tinubu, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, ICAN, has asked the president to engage more chartered accountants as ministers.
President of ICAN, Dr Innocent Okwuosa, who made the call in a statement on Sunday, said the socio-political challenges facing Nigeria today call for the intervention of chartered accountants in public governance.
According to Okwuosa, “chartered accountants should man key sensitive positions requiring proper accountability as there cannot be effective public governance without accountants.”
He said a study conducted by the institute shows that there is positive correlation between having more chartered accountants within a work force and better organisational performance.
“In other words, organisations that employ more chartered accountants perform better than those employing less chartered accountants in terms of service delivery and financial performance.
“This has been proven empirically drawing experiences from Zenith Bank, Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) and Lagos State government. These three organisations span private sector, a government agency and state government respectively,” he said.
He added that “ICAN identifies with some bold economic policy reforms which President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has initiated within the short time of assumption of office such as removal of fuel subsidy and exchange rate unification as outlined in our previous position papers.
“We also identify with his support for clean energy transition that factors in the vast gas resources of the country which in our view is energy justice and will reduce debt exposure of the country.
“We commend him for these quick and bold actions, drawing attention to consideration of the plight of those within the low income bracket.”
Okwuosa expressed belief that President Tinubu’s administration will experience same performance success if more chartered accountants are engaged by his administration.
“Today we are looking for a Minister of Finance that will clean up government monetary policy. What we need is a chartered accountant economist i.e. an economist that is a chartered accountant and not just an economist alone.
“We want to state that within the ICAN chartered accountants, we have economists, engineers, doctors, pharmacists, architects, political scientists, pastors, imams, you name it. So inherent in ICAN chartered accountants are other disciplines, while accounting and finance predominates.
“When accountability permeates every cabinet member and his or her ministry, corruption will be minimised, better governance elevated and Nigerians will instantly begin to feel the dividend of democracy,” he said
Okwuosa also noted that incidentally President Tinubu is an accountant and understands the request being made by ICAN.