Nov. 26, 2023

The declining trust in governance and citizens’ desire for more transparent and accountable public governance was the impetus for developing a tailor-made Public Financial Management (PFM) performance yardstick by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN).

To this end ICAN has commenced the fieldwork to prepare its 2022 version of the influential ICAN Accountability Index covering the 2022 and 2023 financial years.

The most recent ICAN-AI appeared in 2021.

ICAN stated, “After a three-day intensive workshop, the ICAN-AI Assessors
and Coordinators are presently on the field across all the States of the
Federation, including the Federal Capital Territory, to collate data for the 2022 and 2023 assessments.

The Assessors and Coordinators are equally retrieving information that is publicly available on the various entities’ websites.”

It added, “The Institute continues to appeal to all the relevant Ministries,
Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to make the required information available to the Assessors and Coordinators and host the relevant information on their websites for easy accessibility and scrutiny.

A few of the MDAs include: the Office of the Accountants-General, Federal/States; Office of the Auditors-General, Federal/States; Budget Office of the Federation/Ministry of Budget and Planning States; Debt Management Offices Federal/States; Ministry of Federal Capital Territory/Ministry of Local Government; the National Assembly/State Houses of Assembly among others.”

ICAN further stated, “To deepen awareness of the Index, the Governing
Council has approved that a presentation be made at all the Institute’s
conferences. Similarly, ICAN is aware that the report is somewhat abstract
and has commissioned academic members to commence research that
citizens can relate to.

“We also recently commissioned a stakeholder engagement subcommittee. One of the mandates of the subcommittee is to educate citizens to demand accountability from those charged with public sector governance.”

ICAN has pushed the Accountability Index to the attention of global bodies, the Pan African Accountancy Association and the International Federation of
Accountants.

The association is also working to get the World Bank to adopt the ICAN Accountability Index as one of the bases for assessing loan applications by national and subnational governments.

The ICAN President disclosed that the ICAN Accountability Index goes
through a rigorous process to ensure accuracy and fairness.

The seven-stage process includes the selection of the adopted Public Expenditure and Accountability Framework (PEFA), the development of the ICAN-AI Framework, securing the support of the International Federation of
Accountants and the Pan African Federation of Accountants (PAFA) and
manpower training for the field teams.

Others are: data gathering and scoring, development and application of the
ICAN Assessment Tool (Cypher) and the compilation and presentation of the
ICAN-AI Report.

The ICAN Accountability Index featured prominently in the fourth Audit
Reporting Training workshop of the FrontFoot Media Initiative held in Lagos.