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Urges accountants to embrace AI, data
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ANAN President calls for accountants to help close ‘accountability gap’
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President Bola Tinubu has urged accountants in Nigeria to move beyond tracking government expenditure and place greater emphasis on measuring the results and value delivered from public spending.
Tinubu, who spoke on Tuesday at the 31st Annual National Conference of the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN) in Abuja, said accountants must become active participants in governance and economic reforms rather than limiting their roles to keeping financial records.
Represented by the Accountant-General of the Federation, Shamsedeen Ogunjimi, Tinubu said the changing demands of governance required accountants to become guardians of public value, partners in reform and strategic advisers capable of using financial and economic information to influence national development.
According to him, the key question in public financial management should no longer be how much was spent, but what was achieved with the money.
“The question is no longer how much was spent. We must increasingly ask what was achieved with what was spent. That is the transition from accounting to accounting for results,” he said.
The President said the government could not plan effectively or allocate scarce resources efficiently without reliable financial information, stressing that transparency and accountability were essential to building public confidence.
He said the Federal Government had continued to prioritise public financial management, revenue mobilisation, expenditure discipline, transparency and accountability, noting that the 2026 Budget placed emphasis on stronger budget institutions, programming discipline, monitoring and reporting.
Tinubu also challenged accountants to participate actively in the design and implementation of government reforms by providing professional insights, challenging assumptions, identifying risks and offering practical solutions.
He urged the profession to embrace emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, automation and data analytics, saying they would increasingly transform traditional accounting functions.
“Some traditional accounting tasks will become automated. That is not a threat, it is an opportunity,” Tinubu said, adding that technology would allow accountants to devote more time to analysis, forecasting, risk management, performance evaluation and strategic advice.
He further called for greater collaboration among the federal, state and local governments, as well as between the public and private sectors, professionals, academics, development partners and civil society, to address the country’s economic challenges.
Tinubu said accountants had a unique position to understand how public resources were generated and deployed, as well as the cost of inefficiency and the consequences of weak controls.
He also stressed the importance of ethics and professional integrity, saying no accounting system or technology could substitute for the courage to report financial realities accurately, even when the information was inconvenient.
The President said public funds must be treated as the people’s money and called on accountants to insist on proper documentation, authorisation, accurate reporting and prudent stewardship.
He also urged accountants to strengthen their capacity in public financial management, digital finance, data analysis, fiscal risk management and economic policy, while mentoring younger professionals to understand the national responsibility attached to the profession.
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Earlier, the President/Chairman of Council of ANAN, Zuwairat Talatu Kishimi, said the accounting profession must evolve from merely explaining what happened to resources to helping institutions make better decisions and achieve measurable results.
Kishimi, in her opening address, said the theme of the conference, “Redefining the Accountants’ Role in Governance, Reform and National Development,” was particularly relevant amid ongoing tax and fiscal reforms, digital transformation and increasing demands for measurable outcomes.
She said effective accountability should begin before money was committed, with institutions asking what they intended to achieve, what it should cost, the risks involved, how progress would be measured and what evidence would demonstrate success.
According to her, accountants should be involved early enough in decision-making to test assumptions, identify risks and improve the quality of decisions rather than simply report their financial consequences afterwards.
Kishimi also said accountants had an important role to play in ensuring that government reforms translated from policy announcements into measurable improvements.
She stressed that reform succeeds only when intention becomes implementation and implementation produces measurable improvement.
She described the gap between resources committed and results achieved as the “accountability gap,” saying helping institutions close that gap should become one of the defining contributions of the modern accountant.
“A budget is not yet a road. An appropriation is not yet a functioning hospital. Revenue collected is not yet better public service. An investment announced is not yet a job created. And a reform introduced is not yet a reform that has succeeded,” Kishimi said.
She noted that while the traditional question of whether money was properly spent remained important, accountants must also ask what the money achieved.
Kishimi further challenged accountants to prepare for an increasingly technology-driven profession, particularly with the rise of artificial intelligence.
She said the future should not be viewed as a contest between accountants and technology, arguing instead that technology should amplify accountants’ capabilities while human judgement, ethical responsibility and professional scepticism remained central.
“The future is not accountant versus technology. It is the accountant whose capability is amplified by technology, but whose judgement is never surrendered to it,” she said.
She urged younger accountants to prepare for the problems institutions and society would need professionals to solve in the future, while calling on experienced practitioners to transfer knowledge and mentor the next generation.
Kishimi also said ANAN must strengthen professional capacity through its Nigerian College of Accountancy, ANAN University, certification, continuing professional development and research.
She stressed that the association could not achieve the transformation of the profession alone and called for closer cooperation between government, boards, business leaders and professional accountants.
