ANAN Conference: Air Peace CEO, Onyema tasks Accountants on transparency, integrity
…Says, corrupt Politicians are assisted by accountants
By Matthew Denis
The Chief Executive Officer of Air Peace Airlines, Barr. Allen Onyema has tasked members of the Accountants to uphold to the ethics and values of the profession by displaying integrity and transparency in their practice.
Barr. Onyema made the disclosure during his opening remark as the Chairman of the 28th Annual National Conference of Association of National Accountant of Nigeria (ANAN) held in Abuja on Tuesday.
He said “most importantly accountants, uphold your professional ethics, hold it, eat it, sleep with it, worship it because your integrity in the profession is Worth more than billions of Naira.
“Let me tell you something there is only one thing that prevented me from being an accountant and thats mathematics because I admired the profession even though I later chose the Profession that is more noble.
“ When I see accountant I admire your comportment, composure and the profession is made for certain kind of people as epitome of transparency in business.
“And when going through your anthem, i saw so many things that really touched me, we are built in excellence that is one other one is in diversity optimizing in harmony. These are very dear to me.
“ I want to you to ask yourself question on ‘ we’re built in Excellence’ in your anthem as an accountant, have we really achieved that Excellence in our Nation Nigeria? I am not going to accuse you but all the corrupt practices that we have been having in this country from 1960 to date you cannot count your members out.
“Corrupt Politicians whether in Khaki or Abgada who have been pulling public funds are being achieved by Support of accountants using professional system and telling them how to cover it.
“ So you have to be truth to your anthem which upholds you to give the highest level of integrity. No matter what is astake your honor and integrity is far better than the billions of dollars.
He stressed that the country is blessed with potentials, diversity but how can we achieve such potentials without corruption that has put us to this stage.
The CEO emphasized what we profess is ethnic and religious nationalism as against growth and what we should do in this country is to embrace growth.
“if I say this people would say oh because you are rich, no. Please there is nothing abroad. I saw somebody who had 75 million naira and the wife pushed him to relocate abroad and now she wants to divorce him because he cannot work three jobs at the same time.
“So please let us see how we can help each other. I’m not that rich, maybe I am rich in heart, but please the little we have let it go round.
The Chairman stressed that there are so many opportunities in Nigeria, with 1million you can go to Benue state and buy yams and cassava take them to lagos and sell them in wholesale and start making money the next day.