ACCOUNTING SKILLS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF SMALL AND MEDIUM SCALE ENTERPRISES IN NIGER STATE, NIGERIA

The need for sustainable development is one of the key driving forces of the rapid changes and numerous challenges in today’s economic world. Also, putting accounting skills in the context of sustainable development is logically possible. This paper, therefore, examined the accounting skills needed by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for sustainable economic development using Niger State of Nigeria as a focal point. The paper adopted the descriptive research design approach and data were generated from professionals and owners of SMEs in the state through a structured questionnaire. The data analysis was conducted by means of the mean scores and standard deviations of the respondents. The hypotheses were tested using the t-test statistics and the results showed that T-cal. of 2.50 was greater than the T-table value of 1.96 (T-cal. 2.50 > T-table 1.96) at 0.05 level of significance, this implies that the results showed that the owners of SMEs were of different opinions regarding the accounting skills needed by SMEs in Niger State for sustainable development, thereby rejecting Ho1. Also, the T-cal. of 0.97 was less than the T-table of 1.96 (T-cal. 0.97 < T-table 1.96) at 0.05 level of significance in (Ho2). Therefore, Ho2 was not rejected indicating that owners of SMEs were of the same opinion regarding the benefits of acquiring accounting skills. The paper concludes that the acquisition of accounting skills by owners of SMEs is of utmost importance given the numerous contributions that are inherently accruable to owners and operators of SMEs especially in developing nations. The paper recommends that owners of SMEs should endeavour to employ staff that has basic accounting skills