The Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN) has called for autonomy for the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation (AGF).

Its president, Hajiya Maryam Ibrahim, made the call on Sunday in Abuja when she fielded questions at a forum.

She said that autonomy of the Auditor-General would allow the office to act independently and perform better.

“Until the government of this country allows the auditor-general to bite, it will be difficult for the office to operate at optimum level.

Ibrahim said civil society groups and professional bodies should also rise to their responsibilities and demand accountability over how the nation’s treasury is run.

The ANAN president also congratulated the Auditor-General of Nigeria for successfully introducing performance and environmental audit.

“The performance audit is very germane to accountability and the National Assembly needs to carry out its own oversight functions.

“And I’m so happy that there’s a turnaround from the National Assembly because what they started doing for the past six weeks now had never happened in this country.

“So if only they can sustain it then that will be helping the Auditor-General of the Federation of the states and the local governments.

“Then that is an awakening call to the states auditors-general, the local governments auditors-general to equally perform their own aspect of the duty and do their reporting as effective as possible; pursue all the monies released by the governors by the chairmen of local governments.

“When they do that it eases the work of the auditor-general because as much as he does his work and compares his own report with the report he receives from the field, compared with what the National Assembly members have given, it gives him that power.

“They both have to work hand-in-hand to be able to checkmate the executive; that is the essence.

“Civil society groups must rise to their civic responsibilities to ask questions, we must all begin to ask questions.

“The professional bodies, especially the accountants, should start to ask questions and that is why I said our working together will be of great benefit to this country because that will be the beginning of an era where the poor man will find people to talk on his behalf.’’

Ibrahim said that there was the need for the inauguration of the Financial Reporting Council to realise the goals of International Financial Standards Reporting (IFRS).

She said that for it to take off, a board would be needed to formulate the policies, or else there would be problems.

Ibrahim said the reporting standard was very important because that was the only way all the desired professional goals would be achieved.

“It is the government that holistically adopted the International Financial Standards Reporting which is a good thing even though it came, too short for the country’s adoption, because we were not prepared.

“The professionals were not prepared, because even for the developed countries they did not holistically adopt it, but then we have adopted it.

“And the professional bodies feel that we must immediately start to train our professionals and for us in ANAN we quickly had to review our syllabus to incorporate the International Financial Standards (IFRS) curriculum.

“And we are all doing that so that the products we now turn out will have the real knowledge of what it is all about, not just the knowledge, practically they will come out well grounded.

“If the government has accepted it and we have passed an Act; there is a Financial Reporting Council Act of 2011, for it to take off you needed a board to formulate the policies and if you don’t have a board to formulate the policies, it’s a problem.

“Our major companies at least by 2012, we started reporting on IFRS.

“ANAN had to convert its own 2011 account into IFR standard so that our members could use that as an example.

“It’s something we are doing vigorously to generate information, ideas from our members so that we are not caught unawares.’’

Ibrahim, former Auditor-General of Kogi also advised all professional accountants to stay clear of any form of corruption but be accountable to themselves, to their organisations and to the nation.