Adedoyin Idowu Owolabi, the 48th president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), has advised the present generation of Nigerian students to deploy their excess capacities to pursuits that would enhance their future instead of dragging them down vice pathways.
The ICAN boss gave the admonition at the welcome ceremony to the ICAN Ojo-Badagry-Agbara and District Society held at the Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education (AOCOED), Otto/Ijanikin, Lagos recently and urged Accountancy, Business Administration students to begin taking steps to professionalism in accountancy right from their student days.
Owolabi speaking to the students said many serious tertiary students had been able to complete the programmes leading to induction as chartered accountants even before they rounded off in their universities or polytechnics.
By excess capacity, the ICAN boss referred to the other activities and proclivities that are outside the school curriculum which include associations with clear vice contents and the excessive exploitation of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The excess capacity is at work in the social networking and other computer and hand-held devices that are consuming more than 70 percent of young people’s time. Included are the foreign soccer games and video games adding that the youths have become so engrossed with devices that distract them and that these have turned them away from focusing on the future? He said most students go for the BlackBerry, I-Phones and other costly cell phones that hugely distract them from their original academic and professional pursuits, urging them to go for the low-priced handsets erroneously tagged ‘pure water.’
“Consolidate your future even while still in school by using your excess capacities to start right away with the Accountancy Technicians Students (ATS) examinations instead of waiting three or more years to complete the current academic programmes before embarking on the professional education,” he told the students.
KELECHI EWUZIE
