A Professor Emeritus of Accountancy, from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Rev’d Canon Benjamin Osisioma, has described the death of Pa Akintola Williams at the age of 104 as an end of an era.
He said in an interview with The Newsmen in Awka on Monday.
Osisioma,who is the immediate past president of Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN)said that late Williams was a man who saw the future and a trail blazer.
He said that Pa Williams played a foremost role in the development of the accountancy profession in the country.
Osisoma said he facilitated the establishment of the Association of Accountants in Nigeria, which transformed into the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN),which he is one of the beneficiary of the institute.
He also disclosed that Pa Williams was a founding member of ICAN and was also involved in establishing the Nigerian Stock Exchange, now the Nigerian Exchange Group.
Osisioma said that Pa Williams as a seasoned administrator, was an outstanding accountant, management consultant and sequential entrepreneur in his active working days and played a key role in lives of accountants who passed by him.
‘We mourn his passage and respect his legacy,We need to respect our hero’s to create room for more people to follow the footsteps of the hero’s past,”he said.
report that Pa Williams is allegedly the first Sub-Saharan African to become a chartered accountant after he passed the qualifying examination of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW) in 1949.
reports that the death of the notable accountant who celebrated his 104 years birthday on August 9 was in the news as he died earl hours of Monday, September 11.
After his early education in Nigeria, Williams obtained a Bachelor of Commerce Degree (majoring in Banking and Finance) from the University of London in 1946 before he qualified as a Chartered Accountant in England.
He worked with the Inland Revenue as an assessment officer from 1950 to 1952, he left the civil service and founded Akintola Williams & Co., the first indigenous firm of chartered accountants in Africa (now Deloitte & Touche Nigeria.
