Imo State Governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha, has called on accountants under the umbrella of the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN) to join in the fight against corruption in Nigeria.

The governor made this call when members of the association paid him a courtesy call at the Government House Owerri.

He pointed out that due process as conceived in government encouraged corruption in the system, lamenting that corruption has been over dramatised in the country.

“Corruption in Nigeria has been dramatised without solution and that is why there is a need to redefine corruption and its solution,” the governor said.

He noted that what is generally regarded as due process today has in one way or the other encouraged corruption in the country. To this end, Okorocha stressed the need to integrate accountants of government agencies and ministries into anti-corruption agencies, pointing out that this will not only ease off the bottle neck created by due process but also aid good governance.

While he identified corruption as a huge task before ANAN, the governor asserted that a lot of embezzlement is done in the system with pen and paper, as both tend to cover corruption more than exposing them.

He however congratulated ANAN for being professional and for keeping clean and straight the accounts of the nation.

Earlier in his address, ANAN’s National President, Hajia Maryam Ladi Ibrahim, said that the association was in Imo to carry out the first section of the training and retraining of its members in the profession practice and ethics.

The first Vice President of ANAN, Alhaji Zakorideen Tunji Labode, who represented the President, said the aims of the programme include reshaping their members for job efficiency, effectiveness, leadership acquisition and development.

He added that the programme is designed in a manner that it would enable its members perform optimally in discharging the best services to their employers and general public.

Labode maintained that going by the rotatory nature of the programme in the geo-political zones of the federation, members participate in the zone that is best convenience for them.

The ANAN Vice President said that the theme for the 2013 programme is “challenges of the International Reporting Standard”, noting that it will package the body to cooperate in the same standard as obtainable in the globe.

•Photo: Gov. Okorocha.