A United Kingdom-based Nigerian accountant and investment expert, Ms Patricia Adenike Balogun, has urged Nigerians to have faith and confidence in the capacity of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to turn around the economic fortune of Nigeria.  

According to her, the president is well endowed with all accounting and management tools, including the right leadership qualities to transform the Nigerian economy to a prosperous one.

Speaking from London in a Zoom interview with Nigerian journalists in Abuja, Ms. Balogun said, accountants are the best set of professionals that can lead a country out of recession and during the time of prosperity because they are visionaries, innovative and risk takers.

Ms. Patricia Balogun, an Accountant herself, also expressed confidence that the President could leverage on his background in the profession to task his professional colleagues on planning policies capable of reviving several sectors of the Nigerian economy made comatose by the harsh situation bedevilling the country.

She, additionally, asked that the government should reduce the tax burden on small businesses in order to help them navigate and survive the current economic challenges.

Ms. Balogun regarded as an advantage the background of the President as a former Accountant with Mobil Oil Producing and other establishments.

She said: “Accountants like President Tinubu are best to lead a country out of a recession. They are visionary, innovative and risk-takers. Although traditionally viewed as professionals who focus on numbers and data, their role is  more dynamic. President Tinubu has been trained with the capacity to drive growth and embrace innovation. Their analytical skills as Accountants give them the capacity for data-based decision-making.”

She credited the accounting profession with facilitating the development of trail-blazing IT software currently driving innovations such as the Treasury Single Account (TSA) embraced by the Nigerian government, as well as FinTech and e-commerce platforms.

On the TSA, she said: “The accountants within the public sector put ideas together, and came up with that Treasury Single Account system to help ensure better transparency and accountability in the area of the management of funds within the country, as well as to curb corruption.”

According to her, the nation should not underrate the advantages that accountants and the accounting profession can bring to bear on the nation’s search for socio-economic solutions.

Balogun said: “Accountants have the capacity to drive growth and we are innovative. The analytical skills of accountants that make them excel in analysing data are very crucial in a time of economic uncertainty because we use the data we analyse to back the decisions we make. We have the risk assessment method of finding financial risks, along with different scenarios, to produce healthy outcomes. We have very good capacity in strategic planning.

“We know how to use multiple scenarios and models to differentiate which features will facilitate planning for risk-mitigation. We are very good at problem solving. When you have financial challenges, if you bring an Accountant, they are able to use their skills to basically adapt and find changing landscapes in implementing different corrective measures in terms of the time of economic action.

“In terms of being leaders, we create, we use data, we analyse data, and we are able to use them to bring financial health back to a business, to an organisation or to the country at large.”

Balogun recalled that accountants had been drivers behind the adoption of the Financial Reporting Standard (FRS) that has enhanced transparency and accountability within companies and within the country generally.

“During the privatisation policies of the 1990s and early 2000s, the accountants put together measures to help in ensuring that business outcomes were achieved,” Balogun said.

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