You must forgive me for being excessively thankful to the President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, (ICAN) Alhaji Kabiru Mohammed FCA; mni for assigning to me the task of welcoming the fresh crop of chartered accountants into the fold with an address entitled:
“Becoming An Entrepreneur In Nigeria: Opportunities and Challenges”
The mandate given to me insists that my address should be:
•Motivational
•Inspirational,
•and very brief.
The reason I am truly grateful for the lenient treatment accorded to me by the President of ICAN is that I understand that he has been mandated by the powers-that-be to nominate a chartered accountant to join the team to negotiate with the dreaded insurgents and kidnappers – Boko Haram and my name came to mind!! Consequently, I consider welcoming brand new chartered accountants far less dangerous task than haggling with hostage takers.
Without mincing words, the entire world is bewildered and shocked that almost seven weeks after 276 girls were abducted in the middle of the night in Chibok, Borno State there is no trace of them. To further compound our collective misery and despair, the leader of the gang has been shown repeatedly on television threatening to sell off the victims into forced marriages or slavery. Most abominable. We are utterly perplexed. As chartered accountants, we are more familiar with dealing gingerly and sensitively with debits and credits, but nothing has prepared us for coping with a national balance sheet that is in tatters and firmly in the iron grip of the merchants of fear and grief.
The President of ICAN has requested me to be very brief. In deference to him, I intend to be exceptionally brief. Indeed, my address can be summed up in just THREE letters:“PwC” which translate as “Proceed with Caution”.
That is the sum total of my advice to the bountiful harvest we are celebrating today. We should be joyful over the confirmation of life’s perpetual cycle as the new replace the old but our happiness has been tainted, undermined, compromised and subverted by the gloom and despair which have engulfed our entire nation. The focus and interest of the rest of the world are not on the number of chartered accountants we are anointing today. Not in the least. Every hour on CBS; BBC; CNN; Al Jazeera; Sky News etc the hash tag is the cryptic:
“#Bring back our girls”
The airwaves have crowded out anything else – to our utter shame and humiliation.
Like the rest of you, I am trying very hard to focus on what we are here for. Namely, to remind the graduands that today is the climax of a long journey they commenced many years ago. They have devoted time, energy and other resources to diligent pursuit of knowledge and skills as well as the ethics and ethos of our beloved profession. In addition, they have been found worthy in character as “fit and proper persons” to be adorned with the garb of membership/associates of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria. However, your journey is not over. Indeed, the Boko Haram insurgents are adamant that the knowledge you have acquired is “STRICTLY PROHIBITED” It is haram.
Their command is that you must divest and disgorge what they consider as poisonous or forbidden knowledge – or else face their ruthlessness, savagery, and butchery. The merchants of death and destruction have mastered the evil craft of bomb-making and wanton mayhem. It is a monumental tragedy for our nation.
They have already told the world and put us on notice that they have no room for mercy or compassion. Bombs cannot differentiate between moslem or Christian; Ibo; Yoruba, Hausa/Fulani; Ijaw, etc; men or women; adults or children or whatever. Not even between the old chartered accountants and the fresh open faces of the new crop with innocence and optimism stamped on them.
We are all victims. We cannot but be haunted by that photograph of schoolgirls (almost three hundred of them) suddenly plucked from their serene dormitories and plunged straight into the hellfire preceded by being herded into trucks and driven under cover of darkness into the wilderness of the Sambisa Forest, in Borno State.
The children, their parents, the local government, the State Government, and indeed the Federal Government as well as the rest of us are hugely traumatized. The vastness of the Sambisa Forest is beyond our imagination. It is roughly the same size as Belgium and its original settlers are snakes, wild animals and demons. Where do we begin the search for our jewels?
We are holding our celebration in Lagos, thousands of miles from the Sambisa Forest but our hearts and minds are with the victims of insurgency and anarchy from Borno State to Adamawa State and Yobe State now joined by the carnage in Jos (Plateau State).
Before I digress too far from the task assigned to me, permit me to remind you that my message to our freshly minted celebrants is that their journey has only just commenced. It is not the end. All they are permitted is a short rest for fresh air, water and prayers. They must get ready for the challenge of “PwC” –“Proceed with Caution”
What bekons is the future. None of us can guaranty the future (not even Guaranty Bank!!). The future will always remain a mystery.
The old philosophers had their prescription – depression was for the past; optimism is for the future and serenity is for the present. Now, we are not so sure anymore. Our nation has been plunged into the lowest depth of despair and helplessness as we ponder on what to do to rescue the missing girls. What does Boko Haram want –
•Negotiation
•Cease fire
•Truce
•Amnesty
•Surrender
•Exchange of prisoners
•Or, An Islamic Republic?
Each option carries with it its own unique costs and benefits which have nothing to do with conventional norms and principles of accountancy. We are really in a quandary. Now, the abnormal is apparently the new normal.
The photograph of the girls in captivity haunts and damns us all. As we look closer, it dawns on us that what is in the background looks more like savannah (or desert). That is no forest!! This is far too grave a matter to permit grand deception by our own eyes or the deftness / smartness of the ruthless and brutal captors. Anyway, there is no room for fanciful speculation. Just bring back the girls.
Afterwards, the old chartered accountants will have to atone for their sins of omission or commission. How the hell did we allow matters to deteriorate to this state? That is the only question in our examination paper before we quit the examination hall and announce the arrival of the new harvest of brand new chartered accountants who may have already surpassed us with the deftness of their IT (Information Technology) skills, their consummate political savvy; the elegance of their communication skills and above all their resilience. We who have been in the profession for fifty years or more are suddenly being jolted out of our stupour to face the new realities which may consign us to irrelevance if not extinction.
J.K Randle
