Adherence to high technical standards by professional bodies has been identified as the solution to improving the human and professional capacity required today to contribute to economic growth for Nigeria.
Titus Soetan, the 52nd president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, says inadequate quality teaching personnel, decayed infrastructural and instructional facilities are some of the major causes for production of poorly trained students in various fields of human endeavour.
Soetan, during a speech at the accreditation/recognition certificates to tertiary institutions/tuition houses in Lagos, says in line with its statutory mandate of setting standards and regulating the practice of accountancy in Nigeria, the Governing Council resolved to accredit centres where its potential registered students could receive appropriate and qualitative technical and academic training.
According to Soetan, “Accreditation exercise was designed to reaffirm the Institute’s commitment to high technical standards as well as facilitate the choice of academic institutions/tuition houses by our numerous students in their quest for accounting knowledge.”
He says accreditation exercise is part of ICAN’s quality control measures designed to align the quality of knowledge dissemination by these institutions to global standards on which the institute benchmark its training curricula.
“Our Institute’s Accreditation Certificates mark the recipient institutions out as outstanding places for learning, particularly, when it is considered that our accreditation criteria are stiffer than those of the National Universities Commission (NUC) and National Board for Technical Education (NBTE),” he said.
Nnamdi Okwuadigbo, chairman, students’ affairs committee on his part, says the institute carries out accreditation exercise in its bid to ensure that tertiary institutions running accounting/accountancy programme produce ready to be trained accountants.
Okwuadigbo says the institute has till date accredited and re-accredited at various times a total of 76 universities, 46 polytechnics and recognised 65 tuition centres.
According to Okwuadigbo, “This is a worthy achievement for the Institute. Of course, despite this commendable achievement, the Institute is not relenting on its efforts towards ensuring that all the National University Commission and National Board for Technical Educations accredited Institutions offering Accounting/Accountancy are encouraged to get ICAN accreditation.”
He tasks institutions to recognised training centre and see this ceremony as a good gesture from the institute to provide technical support for the accountancy profession in all institutions.
The highpoint of the event was the presentation of certificates to a total of 32 institutions/tuition houses, made up of 11 tertiary institutions and 21 tuition centres.
