Accounting Icon, Pa Akintola Williams has passed away, Monday, barely weeks after celebrating his 104th birthday, in his Lagos residence.
Akintola Williams, Nigeria’s first indigenous chartered accountant, was responsible pioneering Nigeria’s accounting profession and helping to build the Nigeria’s financial sector.
Born in 1919, he studied accounting at the University of London and qualified as a chartered accountant in 1947. He returned to Nigeria and later set up his accounting firm, Akintola Williams & Co., now Deloitte & Touche, in 1952.
He was a founding member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria and was president of the body from 1963 to 1965.
As a member of the National Board of Accountants and Auditors, he received many honours and awards, one of which was the Order of the Federal Republic, OFR and the Nigerian National Order of Merit. He was also a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
Since passing away, Pa Akintola has continued to receive eulogies by many prominent personalities, who described the late accountant icon as one with a sober, cool and unruffled disposition who inspired love and strength, during his lifetime.
Former president Olusegun Obasanjo, in a statement he released by his Special Assistant on Media, Kehinde Akinyemi, said Williams was “an unusual specimen of humanbeing.
“His reflections and piercing insights and insistence for truth and accountability cannot but inspire you. I often admired his calm mien and disposition and when I asked a friend, “why is he always so calm, composed and methodical? He answered, “It is because he has strong internal antenna for controls!”
“He was so pervasive and consistent in his contributions and influence that the accounting professionals in particular and the nation in general must keenly feel his departure. He was an icon and an unusual specimen of human being as well as a nationally-renowned and globally-acclaimed accountant.
“I must confess that my interactions with Mr. Akintola Williams were tangential for a number of reasons. When those of us in the military in the province like Kaduna, where I was, came to Lagos in the mid-1960s, we were looking at the likes of Mr. Akintola Williams at a distance with great admiration and in awe.”
Obasanjo added that, having lived for 104 years, Pa Williams cannot by any stretch of the imagination, be considered to have died an untimely or premature death.
“I pray that the Almighty will grant him sweet repose and give you and other members of his family the strength to bear the heavy and irreparable loss,” Obasanjo was quoted as having said,
