Only attitudinal change can make Nigeria great again-Chidi Ajaegbu, ICAN President

Ajaegbu

Mr. Chidi Ajaegbu, the 50th President of thr Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN),like every other Nigerian, is bothered about the shackles tying down the nation’s progress: corruption. To tackle this malaise, he believes that all stakeholders should have a change of heart and embrace the culture of excellence. To him, if the nation can achieve this feat, all other things shall be added unto it.

Hear him: “The major challenge in this country is corruption.  We can keep talking about what to do from now till tomorrow, but we should have attitudinal change from every stakeholder in the nation.I think that is first thing to do. We must have an attitudinal mind shift.  If we have mind shift towards the Nigeria project, if we can achieve that, I think every other thing will be achievable. Let's start to think about what we can do to take this country out of the woods. We have great potentials; we have massive potentials; everybody knows that we have natural resources; we have manpower resources.  So having resource is not the same thing as developing a country.  We need to have mindset to harness those qualities. We need to move away from the mindset of what generates waste in this country. We need to move towards the culture of excellence.”

In this interview, he bares his mind on some burning issues in the land.

Excerpts:

Backgound

The kind of person that I am, my professional direction was formed when I joined the accounting firm of Binder Balogun and Co in 1984 when I left Government College, Lagos. The accounting firm was where I trained and qualified as a chartered accountant before I became a fellow in 1993.

Early in those days, there was this craze that it was faster to go through the professional offices if you wanted to become an accountant. My father who was a banker felt it was a faster way to actualising my professional dream by joining a practicing firm because it would provide me a better grasp of the profession.

So that is where it started. I joined the firm, got articulated and later qualified in the late ’80s. Did a couple of other professional exams and I am also a chartered stockbroker. I later went to University of Lagos to do my Masters in Banking and Finance.

I have been involved in a lot of start-ups and early in my professional life, I liked run independently. I liked to do my own things my own way. I must tell you that it paid off.

Plans for ICAN

I am barely two, three weeks in office. The way the institute is structured, you come into the presidency as second deputy vice president; from there you get elected into the post of first deputy vice president and then move to vice president and then become the president, if all other things are equal. So what I am trying to say therefore is that in the last two, three years, I have been prepared to take over the leadership of the institute.

As to where one wants the institute to be in the next 12 months, we want to increase the level of our advocacy, we want to also try and enhance the brand and reinforce our certification processes and enhance them and do everything we need to do to upscale our trainers.

We are challenged by the quality of graduates we get to write our examinations; that is a major problem because it is purely an environmental issue and we can’t really do much but what we can do is try and put the necessary structures in place on our own to ensure that candidates that have chosen the noble profession (Accountancy) would get the necessary resources to be able to train, get qualified and be able to hold their own in any professional environment.

The last administration, of course, did start the upgrading of learning resources by signing an agreement with Emile Woolf, London, which is a known name in term of provision of learning resources. In the last administration, we signed a contract with them to help develop our study packs, benchmarking it with global standards. This is ongoing as we speak. We hope to see that through between now and November 2014. We are into making sure that we train our institution house trainers. We need to also shed a lot of pressure in terms of provision of infrastructure base for the institute by building lecture halls across the spectrum of the geopolitical zones.The council has approved the building of lecture halls in University of Lagos, Obafemi Awolowo University, University of Benin, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Ahmadu Bello University and Kebbi State University. We are going to start all that based on approval that we have. We must make sure that we deliver on them before the expiration the next 11 to 12 months. We want to make the learning environment more friendly as much as possible; give them sense of belonging. We are actually trying to get everybody on board. I think doing that will create team relationship. It is worthy to mention here that the lecture halls would also have libraries both electronic ones and physical ones. We also at some point down the line intend to create professional endowment chairs. But as you know, these are expensive projects so it is not something you can take on simultaneously without creating the infrastructure base to drive the profession.On the issue of motivating the lecturers, it is outside our control because we don’t run the universities but we would do everything possible to reinforce the profession everywhere we go.In addition, we want to motivate our workforce to do the right thing by making the working environment friendlier and as much as possible give the workforce a sense of belonging by recognising them as significant stakeholders in the institute.We are doing all we need to do to get everybody on board and I think doing that will create a team spirit. We intend to create positive synergy among all stakeholders of the institute in the next 12 months and through this, we cannot but achieve most of the things we set out to achieve in the first place.To create awareness about ICAN in those locations, to support the schools is sort of also part of extending the resources we have to these areas. So this is not a one-year plan. We have a revolving, rolling plan; do your bit, the next person does his bit. At the end of the day, we take a look at various reports and see whether you have done well and to take remedial actions where you think the desired outcome has not been achieved to the extent you anticipated when you started the plan initially.

We also have what we call special student project.  And the concept is to ensure that we extend accountancy to all nooks and crannies of this great nation.  And we do recognize that the concentration of accountancy in the country is in the West, followed by Abuja.  The council, in the last five years planned to see how to bring those who are lacking in the production of accountants into process of producing more accountants and they created what we call the Special Student project. We have to partner with the state governments to create them in some states. The one in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, for example, is the one approved by the current Commander-in-Chief when he was the governor.We have one in Kano.We also have to partner the state government to create one in Calabar. Truly the results we are getting are amazing.  By and large, it is a very successful scheme.

Rebased GDP

Let me just quickly say that the rebasing of the GDP does not translate to immediate economic gains. The human capital index, which is a major measurement of our standard of living, would not exponentially grow because somebody has said we have recounted our net worth.

It does not change anything because what you are counting is already existing. It’s just making sure that you get the count right. But moving forward, on a near to medium term basis, because GDP is a very critical measure of your performance economically, it is going to impact positively in term of perception. All these are considerations that the international capital provider weigh when it comes to costing. If you look at it from that perspective, it is a good thing.  But if you are looking at it as to GDP vis-a-vis the standard of Nigerians, then we have a lot of work to do. For example, if Nigeria’s claim that her GDP is higher than that of South Africa, can you compare the standard of living of South Africans with that of Nigerians? So it is even an added burden on the part of government to justify that the figure they have now told us is our GDP does actually translate in terms of standard of living of Nigerians. Yes it is a good thing coming from the perspective of international capital  providers, business men would like to come and invest because of our new GDP to the standard of living  to the average man on the street. To me I wouldn’t want to be the one that would drive that process because it is a very difficult thing to do.

Let me also say categorically that policies, even  in a well structured and efficient economies, take about a year to impact. In our own environment, it is going to take a lot more than that. So the rebasing of the GDP, whatever  the impact is, it is not going to be felt by the average citizens in the next couple of months.

Disciplinary process

This question keeps popping up here and there. I keep saying that we have procedures, we have rules.  In actual fact, our disciplinary process is actually the enactment that  makes us to be.The procedure here is that if you have any complaint against a professionally qualified accountant, a member of our institute, you have to write a petition;  you have to swear an oath to that petition. Then when you send the petition to us, we assigned it to an investigating panel.  Investigating panel would review it.  And if it is found out that the individual or a set of individuals are found wanting, then we will take it to our Disciplinary Tribunal, which is an equivalent of a High Court. It is a serious business. But we can't begin to pick this from newspaper pages to investigate. It is simply not possible.  And there is no process that works that way; you heard that somebody, an XYZ chartered accountant, has stolen or cause some infractions. Then you start investigation. It is simply not possible. If you know of anybody that committed irregularities, as an individual, you swear an affidavit to a petition, then we would take it up.  We have a lot of cases that we tackle every year.  And because we are conservative, we do not unduly make noise about them.  But I can assure you that we have very active investigating panel. It is mandatory, it is statutory that we must have it.  And when it comes up with its report that a case must be answered by any of our member, we take it up to tribunal level.  And if there is need to pass judgement on that individual or set of individuals, we will do which may  be expulsion from the institute and withdrawal of certificate.  That we can expel you from the institute, it is that tough.  So it is a serious business, but there are processes and procedures; we must follow the procedures.  When you write a petition, you swear an affidavit, and send it to the institute. The registrar must refer that case to an investigating panel within five working days.

ICAN Vs CITN

The truth is again that CITN (Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria) is our baby.  I want that to be clear. CITN was formed at our council chambers some time back.  And whatever disagreement, or whatever misunderstanding in terms of interpretation of the enabling laws, it can only be for a while.  We are working on it and I am sure we will find a solution to it very soon.  We are almost there.  I think there is just one more sticking point that we are about to tidy up.  So when we are able to tidy that up, we will let you know. 

We have joint membership; we have chartered accountants who are members of CITN; So we are one family.  It is like a misunderstanding within the family which, we know, will be dealt with appropriately.  If you want to talk of various litigations, I see it as a form of dialogue just as the way I see war as an extension of dialogue. At the end of the day, when you go to war to slug it out, you still come back to the table to negotiate.

Advice to government

It is not healthy for us to spend over 70 per cent of our budget every year on recurrent expenditure.  It just shows that the nation does not take capital investment serious.  And  the reason why you have that kind of scenario, I think, is that we have a very large government.  All stakeholders of government must begin to think seriously about laying foundation for good  projects if they want to succeed.  The National Assembly is large and then the overhead being allocated to that type of government is also high.  The Executive system of government is also very large. You know, there is a lot of overgrowing or overlapping functions; agencies and parastatals of government that  can be merged to minimize wastage.  The major challenge in the country is corruption.

To reduce waste, I think we should start getting value for contracts.  We can keep talking about what to do from now till tomorrow, but we should have attitudinal change from every stakeholder in the nation

I think that is first thing to do.We must have an attitudinal mind shift.  If we have mind shift towards the Nigeria project, if we can achieve that, I think every other thing will be achievable. Let's start to think about what we can do to take this country out of the wood. We have great potentials; we have massive potentials; everybody knows that we have natural resources; we have manpower resources.  So having resource is not the same thing as developing a country.  We need to have mindset to harness those qualities.  If you asked, we are really, really in dire situation right now in the country.  We need to move away from the mindset of what generates waste in this country. We need to move towards the culture of excellence.  You know we have the Nigerian attitude of if I am not there breathing down on you, you won’t do the job.  We must go to a level where, as an individual, without any external prompting we must do the right thing the right way.  It is not about people seeing you doing the right thing; it is about you feeling comfortable internally that I am doing a good job.  I think we need that in this country and once we are able to look into that direction,  things will change.  But I can tell you, we have a lot of challenges as a nation.

Advice to CBN Governor

You don't lack policies as to what to do, they have the skills and knowledge to do all that.  I think he should beware of bureaucracy and environmental factors.  He has to be  focusing more on policy impact measures.  What I mean is that he should be mindful of policy direction, like ‘how do I get to impact  on the economy and the people?’  We lack efficiency to operate in the economy to get our policy impact in the people. We can't be having GDP growth of six to sever per cent in the last four to five years and there is unemployment.  That means it is not an inclusive growth. He has to enact policy that will push liquidity to small and medium scale enterprises (SMES).  Everywhere in the world, every economy, that segment of the economy must get special attention. Coming from a private sector background, I think that is a good thing.His former bank, Zenith Bank) is one of the successful banks in Africa. As to whether is qualified, I think the bank is in a safe hand.

Leadership style

I am very informal, very accessible and firm. I believe that power is divine. I like things being done very quickly, I believe in results and not what you tell me. I don’t play politics; I am a very plain talking person. People may not agree with me all the time, but at least they know where I stand on some certain issues.

Work/family balance

I have a very wonderful wife, the truth is that my wife is my pillar and without fear and without her, a whole lot of things would have gone  differently. She is very understanding and you can’t take anything away from her. Whatever I am today, she takes a very large chunk of praise and the work.

I work round the clock. I am not saying that you can’t achieve all that you want to achieve if you work between 8 and 5 o’clock. At a certain level you need to put in more than the 8 to 5 arrangement.