EDP offers 20 scholarships to IT compliant accountants

Lagos-based EDP Tecknowledge Education Center (TCI) in collaboration with its foreign technical partners has finalized plans to offer 20 scholarships to Information Technology (IT) compliant accountants in the country.

Disclosing this at the just concluded Accountants’ Technology Conference at Ojodu-Berger, near Lagos, the Managing Consultant of EDP Audit & Security Associates, organizers of the convention, Mr. Chris Ekeigwe, said the scholarships would motivate interest in IT compliance among professional accountants, who are also members of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN).

According to him, this is expected to draw attention to the technology needs of the profession and help chartered accountants plan their future within the digital economy.

Announcing the development, Ekeigwe said, no less than 20 accountants will benefit from the scholarship aimed at bridging technology gap in the nation’s accounting profession.

He also said the initiative was designed to support the ICAN technology initiative and called on all members of ICAN in the country to see this as a challenge on how small entities could contribute to the current pursuit of technology competence for accountants.

The scholarship, he pointed out would be consummated at EDP Center’s audit and accounting technology laboratories (test beds) where the scholarship beneficiaries will undergo hands-on training on all accounting and auditing relevant technologies including Auditing and Assurance Services (ACL) audit software, accounting software, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERPs), networking technologies, database and web technologies, operating systems and systems audit methodologies.

The essence of the initiative, he maintained is to give potential participants empowering technology skills that would make them world-class manpower with global competitiveness, explaining that the scholarship valued N1,200,000 million per person, covers tuition, course documentation and access to computer laboratories stressing that its not restricted to those who had attended the TCI at EDP Center before now.

Candidates, he noted would be involved in field works on client engagements as part of the training, adding that depending on opportunities, some candidates would only get the limited scholarship valued at N600,000.

Further, Ekeigwe said TCI would be the most important initiative in the accounting profession in the near future.

ICT, he said, has presented enthusiasts with challenges that most people have difficulties coping with technology evolution as well as quality service and public trust, describing it as a knowing-doing gap that has become embarrassment.

“The Knowing-Doing Gap is a humiliating phenomenon. It is main reason why many professional accountants are incapable of optimizing their potential to prosperity in the emerging digital society. We must close this gap now or risk being relegated to obscurity in the digital society,” he asserted.


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