APPLICABILITY OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING PRACTICES IN NIGERIAN UNIVERSITIES: LESSON FROM LITERATURE

Stakeholders are paying increasing attention to how well organisations respond to environment-related issues and communicate with them While efforts are being made by companies in the industrial sector by adopting Environmental Management Accounting (EMA), little is known about how service organisations particularly universities in Nigeria embrace the adoption of EMA in their operations. This exploratory study reviews extant literature to make case for Nigerian universities to embrace EMA and report on environmental concerns arising from their activities. The main objective of the study, therefore, is to find out whether or not EMA can be adopted by Nigerian universities. If so, what barriers mitigate its adoption? Based on a literature review about universities in other climes that have embraced EMA and the experience of the lead author as an erstwhile Bursar of a Nigerian-university, it is concluded that Nigerian universities have the economic and human potential to adopt EMA. The barriers to its adoption are extrapolated to include lack of awareness of environmental costs, lack of top management support, absence of institutional pressure, environmental policy, and a robust accounting system. The study recommends awareness creation via seminars and workshops for top management staff and other staff of the universities, incorporating environmental accounting courses in the curriculum of universities by the National Universities Commission (NUC), as well as integrating them into current accounting systems of the universities, accounting package such as SAGE 50/100 that can identify and classify the environmental costs and attach them to responsibility centres.