Insider abuse: ACCA instills ethics, skills in new accountants

As part of efforts in curbing incessant insider abuse in the Nigerian financial system, Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) has reaffirmed its readiness in ensuring professional accountants that are of high ethical standard.

The acting, Country Director of ACCA, Mr. Olatunji Adeleye, told our correspondent at the sideline of its maiden event tagged ‘Connecting Futures, that one of the things “we pride in is ethics because we have very high ethical standard.”

Adeleye explained that before anyone can have membership of the ACCA, such person must have qualified and go through its ethical module that will attest to the fact that they comply with the institute ethical standard.

Reacting to an enquiry about high rate of inside abuse by accountants in the country, he said: “One of the things we would say is that the ACCA qualified accountant in Nigeria will not perpetrate any unethical behavior.”

According to him, “If you look at the ACCA qualification before you can become an ACCA member, you will go through exams, so we have what is called the three Es: ‘Exams, Experience and Ethics.”

Adeleye, who is also Head of Customer Service for Africa explained that ACCA Connecting Future is all about connecting ACCA customers, whether he is a prospect, whether he is a student or an affiliate.

He added that having just university first degree is not enough because we are in the era where we are building professional graduates and building people for future.

However, one of the things ACCA stands for is being able to provide finance professionals who are prime for the future, and one of the thing we said is that we think ahead and that we would provide students with the skills that organisation will need for their finance profession in the future.

Speaking on the future of accounting profession in Nigeria, the ACCA acting Director noted, “the future is enormous but one of the thing would also to do here is that we want to be able to change the landscape.

“We don’t want people to be thinking that if you do ACCA qualification, or if you study accounting in school that all you will ever accomplished is to become a chartered accountant. But you have different avenue to be able to express what you’ve learnt. And we have a lot of our members who are Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) in various industries; we also have members who have even moved into the academic industry”, he explained.

Knowing the need of accountants in every organization as well as need to abridge dearth of finance professionals in Africa and beyond, Adeleye assured that ACCA had been supporting students/ stakeholders in getting the right needed financial/accounting skills, assisting in tuition payment and offering opportunities to those who might have interest to grow in the profession but lacked the basic steps to start.

Just recently, the ACCA identified importance of professional accountants in achieving sustainable economic growth through effective contributions from finance professionals, equipped Nigerian accountant student in various tertiary institutions across the country with professional tools.

The participants, were equipped with skills that would enable them gain special recognition during an interview such as how to draft a comprehensive CV, interview skills what to do and what not to do during an interview, relevant information about how to become employable after graduation as well as how to develop one’s self to fit into any given opportunity.

It would be recalled that the global professional body successful signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Babcock University in October 2015, and made it became the first ACCA accredited private university in Nigeria.

However, the body had promised to build capacity for the university internally and proposed engaging the lecturers who were interested in becoming ACCA certified to offer them differentiated support to enable their success via the Tutor Excellence Program; which may not require academics to sit and pass ACCA exams in order to begin teaching the qualification.