ICAN President: Youths Now Prefer Careers in Social Media Influencing, Football than Accounting Profession

Dike Onwuamaeze

The President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), Dr. Innocent Okwuosa, has lamented that youths now prefer careers in social media influencing, music and professional football that promise quicker access to wealth than the accounting profession.  

Okwuosa who is the 59th president, expressed this view during his recent courtesy call on the Governor of Bayelsa State, Senator Douye Diri, whom he told that one of the challenges facing accounting is how to attract young ones into the profession.  

Okwuosa, who was received by the Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State, Senator Lawrence Ewhrud, during the visit said: “The youths no longer find accounting profession attractive as professions like football, music, social media influencing and others that will make them rich overnight.”

He, however, commended Governor Diri for supporting ICAN’s initiative that is enabling youths in Bayelsa State to pursue a career in accounting.

Okwuosa said: “But through the Accounting Technicians Scheme of West Africa (ATSWA) initiative of the institute, the Bayelsa State’s district of ICAN, with the support of Bayelsa State Government, has been able to attract many young people into the accounting profession in Nigeria.”

He said that the state government has provided scholarship to young indigenes of Bayelsa to write the ICAN’s ATSWA examination, which is a middle level accounting qualification for school certificate and Ordinary National Diploma (OND) holders, from where they proceed to the professional examination of the institute.

Okwuosa noted that the Diri’s administration has enabled 126 students who have benefitted from the initiative of the state government to join the accounting profession.

“Some of these students have proceeded to the professional examination of the institute and qualified as chartered accountants,” he said, adding that other state governors should emulate what Diri has done.

He also thanked the governor for appointing over 100 chartered accountants into the state’s civil service workforce and appealed to him to consider appointing more chartered accountants into the state’s service because it is the right thing to do.

According to him, “the result of our research shows that there is a positive relationship between having more chartered accountants within a workforce and increased revenue generation and efficiency in service delivery of the government.”  

In his response, the deputy governor on behalf of the state governor expressed appreciation to the ICAN’s acknowledgement of the efforts of the state government in educational empowerment of the youth of which the ICAN ATSWA is a beneficiary.

He assured Okwuosa that the state would strive to increase the number of students in the scheme because an unenlightened society is a gruesome society.

He said that the state government is focused on educational development, which would help to curb social vices among other challenges society is faced with when the youths are neglected.