Audit committee boss canvasses establishment of Akintola Williams University

Christian Ekeigwe, chairman of Audit Committee Institute (ACI), has called for the establishment of Akintola Williams University of Africa.

Ekeigwe, who is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and Certified Public Accountant (CPA, Massachusetts), described Williams as the father of the accountancy profession in Nigeria and Africa.

When established, he said, the university will be a constant reminder to all accountants in Nigeria and, indeed Africa, of the salient contributions of Akintola Williams to the accountancy profession in Nigeria and the whole of Africa.

Ekeigwe made the call in his “A Letter to my Profession III” titled ‘A Pithy Call for Akintola Williams University of Africa – Generational Gratitude Matters.’

He described Williams as a beauteous decoration of accounting and our civilisation, stressing that Williams lives his life affirming the promise of accounting, guarding financial truth, ensures that audited numbers remained inviolate and ensuring the sanctity of illocutionary audit opinion, and did not lead clients and society to trust the untrustworthy.

According to him, “Our benefactor, mentor, and doyen, sage and luminary, in the pantheon of accounting, the centenarian Akintola Williams, exerted discretionary energy to grow the profession in our community, for the benefit of posterity for his forbearances we are beholden to him.

“The promise of accounting or accounting promise is the totality of what society expects from accounting and which the accounting profession has historically pursued to deliver”.

“Williams, a phronimos, lives up to the promise of accounting and his life in accounting practice reassured investors that the sanctity of audited account numbers is inviolate and that the illocutionary force of the words of his opinion conferred certitude to “true and fair view” of the affairs of the entity as presented.

“The Akintola Williams University of Africa should also be a brand-new institution, not a remake or renaming of some ossified institution with superannuated infrastructure, malodorous culture; it should not be an ostensible educational institution but which exists only as a modern engine of credentialism. And it will be diminishing to just name a Department of Accounting in a university or college or a building after him. Such institution might be beset by a specific hysteresis that defies forces of progress.”