The Bill is sponsored by Hon. Yusuf Buba Yakub, Chairman, House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Briefing newsmen on Monday about the bill, the President and Chairman of Council, Society for Forensic Accounting and Fraud Prevention (SFAFP), Iliaysu Gashinbaki said the bill will help fill the void in the fighting and detecting corruption.
Gashinbaki said the bill when passed into law will reduce frauds, embezzlement, economic crimes, financial times and corruption significantly in both public and private sectors of the economy.
He said the bill shall ensure maximum institutional strengthening and capacity building of professional practitioners among others.
The SFAFP president said Accountants by training are mere record keepers and not properly trained for fraud detecting but with the bill, technical assistance and capacity building on how to block leakages and eliminate the reckless waste of public resources\funds will be provided.
He explained, “Accountants are not trained for fraud investigations or examinations, they are trained to keep records of accounts in a true and fair manner that will ensure the integrity of the reporting to its stakeholders and ensure the reliability of those records. That is the reason why the two bodies have been established and they do the same thing; ANAN and ICAN.
“What this bill seeks to achieve is to create another body that focuses on raising 21st century professionals that will tackle, examine, investigate fraud and carry out forensic examinations.
“So the skill set that the members of this bill are going to provide for the nigeria economy are not skill sets that have been provided by the professional accounting bodies in nigeria. That is why anan realising that gap decided several years ago to promote the forensic gap and the frauding examination gap.
“Another key thing you should also noticed is that you realise that we have Department of State Security, Code of Conduct Nigeria police, these are all law enforcement agencies that are involved in a way in prosecution of crimes, fraud either economic or financial but as bad as the situation is in Nigeria in area of embezzlement, corruption, we don’t have dedicated chartered professional body that is focused on raising professionals with the skill set cutting across banking, insurance, capital market and all the shores of endeavors.
“So it is a gap itself and I wonder why we have not looked that way all these years but the time is now because we realise that it is a gap itself. A lot of money has been filtered away through criminal prosecution. We have seen instances where after EFCC have toiled and worked, a case is dismissed at the supreme court and it will take you back for retrial. For some of us that we have been part of this system, we know the amount of frustration and money that have been filtered away to prosecute a case up to securing conviction and all of a sudden, it is thrown out because of lack of competent professional training within the professional bodies that will support the agencies with the right ways of how to track and trace and also consummate the gathering of evidence that will stand the test of trial and you will secure the conviction that cannot be turned away.
“So we actually know that this gap is huge and that is why the society has been created by ANAN that visioned it. ANAN and the society have gone further; but with the combination and support of other bodies, we have now gathered again to push it further to say lets have it chartered so that we can meet the gap.
“The society is going to fill this void that has existed. If the national assembly have this bill charted and assented by the president, the nature and manner and the way we are going to execute, combate money laundering, illicit financial fraud, corruption, fighting of fraud and the dimensions that forensic accounting will take in this country will definitely make our economy, country and nation saver and better.”
