The Nigerian government has told chief
accounting officers in federal and regional Ministries, Departments
and Agencies (MDAs) to prepare for IPSAS and IFRS
implementation.
The government held the latest in a series of
regional “sensitisation workshops” in Abuja, North-Central zone,
where it advised accountants to “provide themselves with technical
and other operational skills” for the implementation of IFRS and
the “hitch-free” adoption of IPSAS.
Yerima Ngama, Nigeria’s minister of State for
Finance, said the implementation process will provide the country
with a “standardised uniform chart of accounts, budget and general
purpose financial statements”, allowing it to meet international
best practice and assisting in the “peer review mechanism of
financial reports among the three tiers of government.”
Jonah Otunla, accountant general of the
federation, advised participants to use the workshop, organised by
the FAAC Sub-Committee on the Roadmap, to probe the “issues and
challenges” of IPSAS and look at “getting the best out of its
adoption”.
Nasarawa state commissioner,Muhammad Mainoma,
stressed the importance of standardised financial reporting as it
made “the issue of comparison, the issue of understanding, the
issue of the utility of the financial statements” much easier.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan started
the process of adopting IFRS last year when he signed the Financial
Reporting Council of Nigeria Act 2011 into law.
