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Diplomat urges strong national institutions, democratic values

By Victor Gbonegun
24 April 2019   |   3:56 am
Former Nigeria’s Ambassador to South Africa, Dr. Tunji Olagunju, yesterday urged politicians and other professionals to shun ethno-regionalised...

Former Nigeria’s Ambassador to South Africa, Dr. Tunji Olagunju, yesterday urged politicians and other professionals to shun ethno-regionalised politics and move toward a moral public philosophy of building national institutions based on the core values of democracy and federalism as public interest projects.

Olagunju, who spoke on “Beyond professional competence: Accounting for good governance of Nigeria” at the 17th conferment of fellowship status on 1,301 members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), warned that a process that involves inter and intra-elite behaviours and others, provides opportunities that give rise to un-reconciled strivings, be it ideas or meanings, that are read into the processes of governance and competition for power, pleasure and profit in our country.

“This development has substituted a new meaning for the Nigerian State with different interpretations by the factionalised self-serving political elite that our country is not yet an integrated political economy,” he stated.

According to him, “the phrase, unity in diversity,” gives meaning to the aspirations of our founding-fathers who envisaged a multi-ethnic state, with shared identity and common destiny borne out of the various peoples and communities in our country. He said this is in pursuance of the common destiny that our founding-fathers adopted democracy as a form of government and federalism as a system of democratic governance in the penultimate decade before independence in 1960.

The former Internal Affairs Minister under Gen. Ibrahim Babangida government advised the awardees to serve as role models and contributors of ethical integrity to the rest of society.

Meanwhile, the President of ICAN, Alhaji Razak Jaiyeola, emphasised that the institute is not relenting in its effort at maintaining standards and professionalism in the profession even as it remains resolute to guard the profession from adulteration by quacks.

“I commend the House of Representatives for its recent bold step at throwing out the Bill for an Act to establish the Chartered Institute of Forensic and Investigative Auditors of Nigeria (CIFIAN). The laudable step of the House of Representatives is not a victory for ICAN, but for the country in its entirety. It is gratifying to note that we have restructured our training programmes after a comprehensive analyses of feedback from members on our past trainings and the continually changing world space where we operate,” he said.

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