Owolabi: How I Emerged First African President of Global Accountancy Body, ACCA, at 39

Last week, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), the foremost global professional accountancy body in its 118-year existence, appointed 39-year-old Joseph Opeyemi Owolabi, a Nigeria-born accountant, the global president of ACCA for 2022/2023, a feat which makes him not just the first African appointed in that role but also the youngest to attain such height. In this exclusive interview days after his inauguration, he spoke on the strength of Nigeria’s banking systems, how he emerged as the first African president of ACCA and his plans for the body, the Nigerian economy, and other pertinent issues. Nume Ekeghe presents the excerpts:

Congratulations on becoming the global president of ACCA. Please give us a background on yourself and how you rose to this position.

I was elected the global president of ACCA and chairman of its board on the 10th of November 2022 at the annual general meeting and council meetings in the United Kingdom. So, ACCA is the association of Chartered certified accountants; it’s a global accounting body that is the largest in the world. We’ve got members and students in 171 countries. We have a quarter of a million members and about 550,000 students, about 800,000 members and future members. Our purpose is to develop the accounting profession that the world needs, which includes everything happening in the world, from climate change to money laundering issues, challenges around automation, cybersecurity, and all of that. So, what we want to do is provide the accountants we need today but, more importantly, develop accountants that would solve complex problems tomorrow.

Please speak on your educational background, work experience, and how long it took you to get to this feat.

I schooled here in Nigeria. I was born in Lagos and grew up in that part of Lagos called Computer village. I attended primary school here until I attended the University of Lagos for my first degree at the College of Medicine, where I did a medical science program. I started my career with Zenith bank here in Lagos. I wrote a number of exams and certifications. I’m a certified information systems auditor. Afterwards, I moved on to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), where I wrote my ACCA exams and became a qualified accountant. In terms of work experience, I’ve obviously done banking, as I mentioned. With PwC, I did things around cybersecurity, moved on to financial reporting, and later had different other roles. Then with Ernest Young (EY), I started their climate change, sustainability services, and business practice. I moved to Australia some six years ago, working with PwC in Australia as a senior manager and then with Deloitte as a director before I started my company called Rubicola. So, Rubicon is focused on climate issues, raising money to fund Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), pretty much so anything that would help reduce the carbon footprint. So, think about solar farms and green buildings. 

So Rubicola is the first firm in Africa to be approved by the Chartered Banker Institute (CBI) in London for the verification of green bonds. On how I got here, I’ve been a member since 2011. I used to teach. I love imparting knowledge and helping the next generation of accounts. And so that was where I started getting involved with the association. I stood for election in 2014 to represent Nigeria in London and did that for about a year then, I stood for the global council, and got elected in 2015 and I’ve been on the council in different roles. I got elected again as the first person from Africa as vice president two years ago, got elected last year as deputy, and thankfully now president.

How old are you?

I’m 39 and will be 40 in two months.

Earlier, you mentioned you had a banking background; how would you assess Nigeria’s financial system?

I think it is strong. I think we’ve got one of the strongest financial services centres in Africa. So, you know, the likes of Zenith and GTB and Access bank have gotten awards from the Financial Times (FT) in London and all over the world around sustainability and more. Few years ago, when Sanusi was Central Bank Governor, there was a recapitalisation of about N25 billion or so, which gave Nigerian banks the bandwidth to be able to do transactions, which also came with a number of acquisitions around Africa. So, you’ll find that most of these banks are in the West Africa corridor, some of them even in New York. I think the banking services or financial services as a whole is strong. There are obvious areas for improvement, some of that include things like conduct, so people complain a lot about being charged fees that they don’t know what it is about. So, there’s a concept around fees for charge meaning you charge fees for services rendered. So that’s an area that could be improved. But I’ve lived in Australia. I can tell you that the banking system in Nigeria, in terms of transactions, if you do a transfer, you get an alert immediately and I think that is innovative, that’s cutting edge.

Can you elaborate on the concept of service fees?

So, there’s a concept for fees for service, such that it is only fair that you should only charge customers for services that you’ve rendered. I’m not saying that’s the case, but sometimes you hear complaints about people not understanding what they have been charged for and it’s not just in Africa or Nigeria. It is all over the world. So, what you find is that, in some countries like the UK, or Australia recently, the government will have a royal commission of inquiry. 

So, if there’s a problem with a particular sector it could be financial service could be anything else telecoms. The government set up that inquiry so, in Austria, we just had that. That means the government now goes to look at that sector, in that case, there could be issues around compensation. So, what forward-thinking organisations would do is that they don’t need to wait for a royal commission to happen but think about their fees and be sure you do that audit to be sure that your customers understand the fees and the fee structure for an accompanied service. So, people are getting N100 and charged for XYZ and they don’t understand or they just get it annually, that could be what we call conduct.

Let’s digress from financial services. This is an election cycle. What should be the major conversation on the economy for the candidates presently?

I would love to say I’m not a politician, but you could argue that I’m a politician. But without necessarily going into politics because it’s always a contentious issue, I think leadership is what Africa needs across the board, be it national, state, or local government. Now is the opportunity for citizens to ask questions, to not just ask questions, to focus on pertinent issues and not just issues around where someone is from. I’m part of an association where we have members from 171 countries, even though we have not had anybody from Africa, I’ve had the opportunity to be leading this organisation, because we have value. I think the critical thing is to go back to our

values, what are important to us, and when I talk about values, not just about those nice things like respect, courage, all of that, but values could be what you want to see? You could think of that as values. I think for us in Nigeria, come 2023, we need to think about what issues matter to us most, is it security, is it power or is it education? Then we need to hold our leaders to account and ensure that we put the right people in the right place to guarantee that.

As ACCA president, what are you planning to bring to the table different from your predecessor, and how long is your tenure?

In terms of tenure, it is usually a three-year journey, vice, deputy and president. So, my presidential year is just a year, which just started this week already, so probably 51 weeks left of that. In terms of what I would do, the council, which is the highest level of governance within ACCA assesses the strategy we have till 2025. My focus is delivering that strategy working with council members and our board to deliver that strategy. But my main theme for the year is to connect our community. Like I mentioned, we’ve got 171 countries where we’ve got members or students, so, I will be interested in connecting our communities for collaboration. 

So, think about COVID, a lot of people felt isolated and as we are coming out of that now in the last year, there are still challenges around how do we work from home, is it hybrid, do we stay in the office? So, connectivity is important. The other part I would love to do is to inspire future accountants, I just talk to you on summary of my journey and I’m also conscious that I’m probably younger than most of my predecessors, so I want to use that opportunity to be able to inspire that hunger and ambition in the minds of young people to reach for their dreams.

How will you assess Nigeria’s borrowing and resource management, especially fuel subsidy and fiscal position?

It is a tricky issue, depending on whom you talk to; there are always different views about that. I think we can all agree on some common themes there and that governments around the world have gone into debt, which is the truth because of COVID-19. So, whether Nigeria’s debt has been caused by COVID or not is left for us to look at. But the fact is that most governments around the world from the US to UK went into significant debt, which I think is putting pressure on future generations. It is not just in Nigeria that people are concerned about debt. There’s a lot of concern around the world around, going into trillions of dollars globally in terms of debt. 

So, there are different ratios as an account to look at such as debt to GDP ratio, all of that. I think that’s what should drive the conversation and can we do better? So, it’s not just about getting debt but what are we using debt for. What is more important is how are we using those funds. Can the citizens get assurance that if we borrowed N100 billion for roads, they actually go to roads? Those are the challenges. Borrowing should not be too much, because whatever you borrow is not free money. Future generations would have to pay in terms of taxes, and what have you and it also put strains on generations to come.

However, we also know that government might not be able to fund everything so they need to borrow. So as accountants, we’re interested in do you have internal controls to ensure that those funds go to the appropriate place. If it is going to go to healthcare, it should go to healthcare. Then how do you repay them back? It’s not just borrowing. Do you have cash flows that would help you repay those funds if you don’t repay them? Sometimes those funds are against an asset, and we’ve seen in some countries where the lenders have come to potentially retrieve those assets.

Could you elaborate more on Nigeria’s economy?

This is more on economics, but from an accounting perspective, the numbers speak for themselves. Some would argue that there’s bandwidth, there are opportunities to still borrow. But in terms of performance indicators, what you’d use to know performance is things like the interest to revenue. So how much are you paying on interest, and how much of your revenue goes to that and these figures are alarming and troubling, and we know that already. It means that we need to be conscious of it. We need to think about how do we also reduce costs. So, there’s a lot of, commentary around our cost of governance, the Senate, and all of that. Do we need to streamline that to reduce the cost? Again, as accountants, we focus on ensuring that accountants are not just counters. They also think about strategy.

You mentioned earlier that your firm has a footprint on climate, and with Nigeria not being able to utilise this fully, how can Nigeria assess more green bonds in the near future?

Nigeria is one of those few countries in Africa that has got an increase in the uptake of green bonds. About seven or six years ago under the leadership of the stock exchange and former Ministry of Environment who is now the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, there’s been a lot of need for assessment and setting up the Nigerian green bond advisory council speaking to the market participants

about it. There has been a lot of activities and we are working with clients in that space and one of client is Infracredit to help them in that journey. There is still a long way to go, but I think in Africa, and even around the world, Nigeria was the first sovereign to issue a green bond back in 2017. And that was the first one coming from a sovereign world to get a CBI certification and only the fourth in the world to be a sovereign bond. So, there’s a lot of, I think, uptick coming from this market. There is still a long way to go but I think there is a need and hunger in the market to have green bonds as another type of financial instrument for both lenders and borrowers.

Is Nigeria at a place where it’s okay, or how much should it aim to access through green bonds?

No country is okay. There is some literature out there that says we need potentially, probably about $30 billion or so every year in Africa to be able to address climate challenges, from floods to increases in temperature to deforestation and all of those things. Also, even though you have the funds around, there is also talk around how do you get the eligible assets. So, it’s not just having the funds, you can mobilise the funds but how do you get eligible assets to help you, put forward to investors, institutional investors and have you to benefit from.

How best can Africa fund its infrastructure deficit?

In terms of the deficit, there are many ways you can fix that deficit. And one of that probably would be green bonds. So, some of that deficit will probably be fixed by raising green bonds, and green bonds are bonds that will go towards sustainable development goals. An example is addressing the power challenge. Some of that funds would be on projects that should be in power. So, can we package some of that projects and turn them into solar, wind farms, or hydro that would save the environment and potentially also attract investors that are interested in Environmental, social, and governance (ESG)? Today, a lot of institutional investors, foreign direct investments (FDIs) are looking for those kinds of projects, and we can package for them. There are a lot of modular solar farms people are doing that. You can also do and feed into the grid, potentially reducing the cost of power. 

The other part would also be looking at other classes of assets, that can be used but I think predominantly, that’s a key one. And so, there’s actually traction already in the market, they are doing some things, but potentially, we need to get all states moving in the right direction. Lagos is thinking of issuing something like that. Why can’t other states follow suit?

As ACCA president, what would you bring to Nigeria? How would you make your presence felt in Nigeria?

Soon after my inauguration, I jumped on a plane to be here because Nigeria is a key market for us. We are interested in developing future accountants for a long time but more importantly, to participate in different policy formulation. We make recommendations into the financial reporting council of Nigeria (FRCN) exposure draft. So, we are here helping and assisting with policy formulation and assisting with the development of accounts and our future

accountant. But more importantly, my role is not just for Nigeria, so I represent everyone and just being in that role itself and being a force for the public good, which is how we want to see ourselves.