12 Things To Know About Late Akintola Williams

Elder Statesman and the Doyen of Accounting, Chief Akintola Williams, is dead.

Naija News earlier reported that Williams died around 9 am on Monday at his Lagos residence.

Here are things to know about the late Pa Akintola Williams:

1. Chief Akintola Williams was born on August 9, 1919 (104).

3. He began his education at Olowogbowo Methodist Primary School, Bankole Street, Apongbon, Lagos Island, Lagos, in the early 1930s, the same primary school his late junior brother Chief Rotimi Williams attended.

4. He went on to Yaba Higher College on a UAC scholarship, obtaining a diploma in commerce.

5. In 1944, he travelled to England where he studied at the University of London. Sturdying Banking and Finance, he graduated in 1946 with a Bachelor of Commerce.

6. He continued his studies and qualified as a chartered accountant in England in 1949.

7. After returning to Nigeria in 1950, Williams served with the Inland Revenue as an assessment officer until March 1952, when he left the civil service and founded Akintola Williams & Co. in Lagos.

8. The company was the first indigenous chartered accounting firm in Africa.

9. Williams participated in founding the Nigerian Stock Exchange and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria.

10. Between April 1999 and May 2004, Akintola Williams & Co. merged with two other accounting firms to create Akintola Williams Deloitte (now known as Deloitte & Touche), the largest professional services firm in Nigeria with a staff of over 600.

11. His firm, founded in 1952, later grew organically and through mergers to become the largest professional services firm in Nigeria by 2004.

12. His youngest brother Rev James Kehinde Williams was a pastor in the same church. Olowogbowo Methodist Church.