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Role of Accounting

In: Business and Management

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THE RELEVANCE OF MY ACADEMIC QUALIFICATION TO THE ECONOMY
Introduction
Accountancy is the foundation of accountability in public and corporate governance. Accounting entails capturing financial activities, summarize and interpret them for its various users, because financial information is necessary for informed decision to the management, employees, regulatory bodies, potential investors and other stakeholders. Accordingly, accounting is often referred to as the language and soul of business for the fact that it produces and keeps pertinent financial information of business entities. The profession strives to protect its core values of integrity, competence and objectivity which remains the time tested building blocks for what has been a truly successful and honoured profession. For the study of accountancy in Africa, Nigeria is important for several reasons. Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, has crude oil as her main export and she has remained a rentier state in terms of revenue generation. The need for legal regulations for exercising accounting profession came to reality on September 1, 1965 by the enactment of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria Act (ICAN). Some decades later the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria was established by law. For the accountants to truly play a leadership role in their field, they must be proactive participants in the development process. Nigeria became independent in 1960 at the crest of a global wave of decolonization. Nigeria was born a giant. Economically it started out on a strong base, when its per capita income was higher than those of India, Pakistan and the Congo. She could feed her people and was a leading exporter of palm produce, cocoa, groundnuts, cotton and tin ore. Then came the oil boom, the explosion of international oil prices transformed the macroeconomic situation

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