By Oluwakemi Abimbola
The Chief Executive Officer of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria, Dr Rabiu Olowo, has said the deployment of the Accounting Development Tool in Nigeria would promote financial transparency.
Olowo, said this when the Netherlands Consul-General in Lagos, Michel Deelen, paid him a courtesy visit to discuss the ADT in Nigeria Project, being done in partnership with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
The FRC boss, “This allows us to align with the global baseline for accounting practices and this means a lot to us. So, this allows us to say thank you and one of the important reasons you are visiting this morning is to check how well that is going; this means that you are not just giving in your financial resources but also checking to see how well this is meeting with the expected output.
“There is no better avenue to make this kind of investment other than strengthening regulatory authorities like ourselves. Our vision is to enhance regulatory assurance, to embed transparency, and accountability and ensure that the users of financial statements can rely on them.”
Olowo explained that though current economic hardship in the country would make companies susceptible to manipulation in the presentation of their financial reports, he said that as a regulator, the FRC would be alert to discourage such a trend.
“We are all aware of what is going on in Nigeria today, economic challenges or hardship if you like; research has shown that this period stimulates and encourages companies to do the wrong thing, especially when it comes to financial reporting.
“For us as regulators we are very alert and awake to our responsibilities and your investment in Accounting Development Tools will only further strengthen our capacity to do our job very well. So, we want you to leave here with the assurance that we are committed and not just taking on the project but to see the outcome as delivered,” he said.
The Netherlands DG said, “The Nigerian context sometimes makes companies creative in their bookkeeping and we all know that is not good or beneficial to anybody; not to shareholders and not to the public at large.
“So, it is crucially important that you do this to the best of your abilities and where we can assist you we will. Interestingly, many people will probably think but you have accounting firms who do this.
“In the Netherlands, we believed a lot in the accounting firms, but after the financial crisis, we realised we can’t rely on accounting firms anymore because they are part of the system. As a result of that, there were many changes made in which accounting firms in the Netherlands operate and their responsibilities.”
The ADT is a comprehensive toolkit designed to evaluate the legal, institutional and human resource requirements necessary to enhance the accounting and corporate reporting infrastructure of a country.
It enables countries to compare their capacity against international standards and best practices in accounting regulation.
(Punch)
