Nigeria’s economic growth must be in tandem with development, says Onuoha 

 

ADEDOYIN Idowu Owolabi recently emerged the 48th President of the Institute of Chartered Accountant of Nigeria (ICAN), after serving for 14 years as governing council member of the institute. With his investiture, Owolabi became the first alumnus of the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), to be ICAN president. Also, he is the first indigene of Ekiti State to hold the position and the first fully trained audit trainee of Akintola Williams & Co (now Akintola Williams Deloitte) to hold the office.  In this interview with BUKKY OLAJIDE, Owolabi bared his mind on the state of accountancy and other germaine national economic issues. Excerpts.
What would be your major focus during your tenure as ICAN President?
Before becoming the ICAN president, you must have passed through being a council member, exposed to some of the needs of our members and to a lot of things in the profession and eventually you end up with the presidency of the institute from being the second deputy vice president, deputy, the vice president and eventually, becoming the president.
So, you will agree with me that for someone to have gone through all these stages, you must have really had a focus that is in consonance with that of the institute. Governance in ICAN is a continuous process. So, you must have witnessed a situation where some presidents that served ahead of you brought in their own programmes, continued with the ones they met on ground, executed part of theirs and handed over to the other president.
So, no president in ICAN can really claim credit to any particular idea. We always hand over projects from one president to the other until it is concluded. They are never abandoned. Therefore, those projects I met on ground would be sustained and executed. We shall not lose focus and we shall continue to introduce some new projects, like the whistleblowers Act, which the institute will be sponsoring later in the year. This Act is to help professionals irrespective of which industry they belong.
This is because you discover that corruption in Nigeria has eaten deep into the system. Knowingly or unknowingly, a lot of Nigerians are falling preys to corruption. For example, before you can fall prey, it’s either you are completely bad on your own or you have a tendency towards such things. Another example is that you are falling prey as a result of societal pressures. This is a country where we do everything for ourselves. We fend for ourselves in terms of provision of security, power, water and even roads. You discover that in some cases, it is the residents that will contribute to buy gravels and rubbles to fill up potholes for their roads to make them more motorable. And then, of course, we want to ensure that we are able to cope with this societal thing.
If your salary or disposable income is not sufficient and you don’t have the discipline then you fall prey. Also, there are those who will tell you that if you don’t do bad things with them, they will eliminate you and out of fear of elimination, you fall prey.
Again, when you are faced with such a terrible situation, you think of keeping your job, while you are likely to lose the comfort of your office as well as not being able to put bread and butter on the table again and you realise that for so many reasons, your dependants and so on must not laugh at you. So, that person will decide to make ends meet by turning the other side.
Also, if you have nothing to fall back on, in times of certain challenges, you probably fall prey.
So, we decided to bring in this whistle blowers Act, which will enable all professionals in such difficult situations to be able to speak out confidently, realising that at least there is a law protecting them. Hopefully, within the next two to three months, we would have tidied up our books to go to the National Assembly.
The accounting profession in Nigeria as in other parts of the world, always lead the crusade for transparency and accountability in governance in Nigeria. What role do you think ICAN can play to achieve this?
We need to follow the rules of the game. All over the world, we have a slogan in the profession– “figures don’t lie”. Because it is the figures that determine the values of your goods and services that you presented to us. It is the same set of figures that you have collected as your corporate data in order to report to stakeholders the activities of your organisation within a particular period.
And you will discover that even if you have spent x million Naira on a particular project, you are not going to keep the books itself. Somebody else who keeps the books will have to do the posting, somebody else will have to do the checking. The auditor also comes in independently. The accounting profession ensures that our day-to-day transactions from time to time are exposed to all stakeholders, to scrutinise, ask questions and be satisfied or otherwise.
So, this institute will continue to ensure among its members. We don’t have a choice anyway.
Also, in terms of integrity, honesty, I will tell you that every society and every profession must have its own bad eggs. Where our members have decided not to play the game according to the rules, despite the accounting and auditing standards, as well as guidelines, where they have failed, there are disciplinary procedures. And those of them who have been found guilty, have been appropriately brought to book.
In your inaugural speech, you said you will use your professional expertise and intellectual scholarship to redefine the best values for ICAN profession. How do you intend to do this?
Unfortunately, our values in Nigeria have been thrown to the winds very quickly. The institute is part of Nigeria, we have some key values that we do abide by professionally, and these values are probity, honesty and integrity, all rounded up into the value of contentment.
We want to start from our own microenvironment to ensure that every member of the institute continues to adhere strictly to these professional values. Not only that, we want to encourage all our members to go out to their clients, their colleagues and preach these values to them.
This is a realisation of the fact that it is only those who are doing it right that can survive in a corporate environment. Those who are cutting corners often fall by the side.
So, it is these values that we are urging our members to keep embracing from time to time, just like we have done in the past, we shall continue to remind them.
It is no longer news that Nigeria is rated among the poorest countries of the world. The abundant natural resources cannot translate into prosperity for the people. How can the nation come out of this crisis?
On the issue of being one of the poorest nations in the world, there are parameters to measuring this. If we are to talk of being rich or being poor, I will say Nigeria is one of the richest nations in the world. But in terms of management of our resources, I will say that we are found wanting. That is what is actually lacking. If these resources are properly managed and harnessed towards the development of the country, you will discover that Nigeria will be a leader anywhere in the world.
On the available resources and the state of infrastructure, there is no nation that concentrates on spending a lot on recurrent expenses that is able to develop its infrastructure. Nigeria spends so much on recurrent expenses – salaries and the likes to the extent that we tend to neglect infrastructure in the country.
It is only when we are able to put enough aside for long term planning that we can focus more on infrastructure and these are the things that actually hinder the economy in the long run.
Mind you, in economics, the growth of any nation must be accompanied by development before you can say that the nation is progressing. Unfortunately, that is not the case in Nigeria. We don’t see development in terms of physical structure, infrastructure and the likes, we only hear of growth, particularly of population. So, we have got to be very careful.
We must be able to be productive and we must channel the nation’s revenue towards our needs. Personally, I believe that the greatest need of Nigeria that will aid our economy is adequate power generation and supply. Unfortunately, we are not even generating enough power in Nigeria not to talk of distributing it. So, you will discover that cost of production is very high because every organisation, every manufacturing business will generate its own power, will cater for its own security, will sink and maintain its own borehole in order to keep the organisation going. All these costs are not just going to be borne by the organisation, they must be passed to the consumers – you and I and by the time you complete the cost of production, you will discover that the cost of all these things that you have to cater for, which the government ought to have provided, could undermine business prospects.
Most currencies of the world experienced depreciation after the global economic crisis but majority recovered soonest.   Naira is experiencing continuous depreciation. How can we stem the tide, moreso as the economy is import dependent?
Unfortunately, Nigeria started very well. We took off as an agrarian economy in order to produce raw matters. From that agrarian economy, it progresses into a manufacturing stage, which is the second stage. In fact, under agrarian economy, the whole western region thrived and survived on cocoa and some other products. The whole eastern region did the same thing. The region was able to extend to coal. The whole northern region survived and thrived on groundnuts. And sincerely speaking, most Nigerians were comfortable.
The economy got to the second phase, which is the manufacturing, we then started to face some problems. First, the western world needed these raw materials to run their own industries abroad, so, the problem of exporting them arose for next to nothing in terms of hard currency.
Two, Nigerians, for one reason or the other, decided to neglect or abandon this second phase, for the third phase, which is the most sophisticated phase, and that is the service sector an economy. White collar jobs crept in, we abandoned the farms, we abandoned the villages. The farmland, which should have been developed into mechanised farming was left unattended to. So, every Nigerian graduate wanted to become white collar professional. So, the land was neglected.
And because we got into this stage, it was discovered that a farmland having been neglected could no more produce enough for the industries. For example, the first feed were taken away to Malaysia from Nigeria which used to be an exporter of palm oil became an importer of palm oil to keep soap industry functioning in Nigeria. This is just one of the numerous examples.
So, today, we are importing foods in a country that used to feed itself. Economically, a nation that fails to feed itself is more or less in serious trouble. So, that is the situation we have found ourselves now. So, as a mono-cultural economy, we spend all our revenue from abroad even from within, changing it into foreign currencies to import into Nigeria to consume. We have since stopped being a producer-nation. The various industries in Ikeja, Kano, Aba and the likes are more or less dead. I got to Kano sometime ago and I was almost moved to tears because the industrial machines that used to make noise in the metropolis are no more there. The place is now quiet in terms of manufacturing.
Small scale industries are not even springing up. So because of all these, our currency cannot survive. We must have a lot of products out there. The government must be ready to encourage people to go in to productive areas. In order to do this, we must be ready to hold the bulls by the horns. This concerns the issue of power generation and distribution, which must be properly and adequately addressed.
It is indeed, a shame that a country where electricity supply was not much of a challenge when I was a young boy has become the greatest importer of generating sets. It speaks volumes.
The moment that issue can be addressed, a lot of things will be attended to, and cost of production will come down. Just like in India, a lot of cottage industries, backyard companies will start to develop. They will start to produce. Let us estimate that each one will employ three to five persons and along the street, we have a chain of them, you will discover that young graduates will be gainfully employed.
If they are gainfully employed, the devil will stop finding jobs for their idle hands. So, the issue of security will be automatically addressed. The police and the other law enforcement agencies will now have a focus. So, it’s like a whole package on its own and the government cannot afford to leave one for another. It’s just unfortunate that at this stage of our development, we must address everything at once together and that is why I said we must be ready to hold the bulls by the horns.
However, it’s not going to be easy. Leadership of this country must be realistic and must be effective enough to provide level playing ground for everybody while the followership must be understanding enough and persevere, knowing fully well that we are now reaching the end of the tunnel and at the end of the night, there will be light.
What is your view on the cashless policy of the Federal Government in a situation where three-quarter of the population are illiterates.
Cashless policy: Is it really cashless or limited cash policy because strictly speaking, grammatically if you talk of a cashless policy, it means that there will be no cash in the circulation at all. But I want to believe that what they are trying to address is the problem of carrying too much cash around to the extent that fraudulent people can easily pass cash from one hand to the other, and the problem of money laundering being addressed.
Now, will it work! Let us look at the various infrastructure to support it. Because these things are Information Technology (IT) based and being IT based, they rely really on one thing- power generation. So, if you are not addressing that first, how do we expect something that will be reliant on it to work. You may say yes, generators are there, but must we pride ourselves with generators in this country?
The telecoms providers came into Nigeria. They erected their masts, put generators for every mast and it was running. Today, they are beginning to have problems again, because cost of maintenance of these generators have gone up, cost of fueling them has gone up. Even the cost of purchase of these generators have gone up too. Their network are sometimes bad because the system cannot perform optimally as supposed to do.
So, things that will affect the cashless economy must be addressed first. Cashless economy is not the problem but the major problem we have in Nigeria is doing business in Nigeria with its hazards. For instance, when ATM cards were introduced into Nigeria, we all jumped for joy because I do not have to go and queue in the bank again. But virtually every ATM card holder has suffered one form of loss or the other. Some, they made up for it, some they did not make up for it. And this form of suffering has come as a result of these hazards.
In like manner, to run our cashless economy, we are going to rely on card-debit, credit and so on. If we have not successfully managed power and this moral hazard of doing business as well, how do we want to manage that? So, let us be realistic. I am not saying that we should go back to the old order, but let us go to the drawing board and address the main issues that would have been addressed before this pronouncement was made.