The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, ICAN, has reacted to the federal government’s discontinuation of budgetary allocations for professional bodies and councils.
In a statement on Thursday, the President of ICAN, Innocent Okwuosa, while applauding the initiative, noted that the institute voluntarily stopped the government’s yearly N1 million and N5 million allocations 34 years ago.
Okwuosa’s reaction comes against the development reported by Media Talk Africa that the federal government had removed professional bodies and councils from a budgetary allocation from 2026.
However, ICAN said it does not support discontinuing budgetary allocations to the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria and the National Council on Climate Change.
“We want to state that once upon a time, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) received an irregular meagre budgetary allocation of between N1 and N5 million a year. In 1989/90 years, ICAN voluntarily returned the cheque for the budgetary allocation back to the Federal Government (FG), declaring itself a self-financed organisation.
“I want to categorically state that since 1990, ICAN has been a self-funded organisation and does not receive any budgetary allocation from the FG. ICAN relies on members’ subscriptions, Professional examinations, Continuous Professional Development (CPD) and Faculty programmes’ net fees, other self-financing events such as Annual Accountants Conference (AAC), and financial support from organisations that identify with the ICAN brand.
“However, we do not support the discontinuance of budgetary allocations to some Regulatory Councils that function as parastatals example, the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRC) and National Council on Climate Change (NCCC).
“We will advocate for more budgetary allocations to the FRC to enable it to fulfil its many mandates. Similarly, given that climate change and energy transition are now burning global and local issues, the NCCC will need more budgetary allocations to execute its important mandate.”
