Nigeria Needs Auditing-Only Firms To Reduce Conflicts And Boost Independence

There are many lapses in the auditing systems in Nigeria. We need to fix them if we expect to rise as a nation. To do that, we need to go legislative and have reforms on how to structure auditing firms.

My recommendation remains: no company can be an advisory firm and also an auditing firm. Advisory and Auditing businesses should be independent companies, not just divisions or units within one company – either you do advisory or you do auditing.  That way we can reduce conflicts

I am not an accountant and please bear with me for my perspective on this. But I have seen things that make me sad. In Nigeria, we need to ensure that any company offering Auditing services cannot sell Advisory services besides audit!  Simply, all auditing firms must do only one thing – auditing.

It is foolishness to expect a company that just won a consulting business from a bank on technology transformation to also audit the same bank when its projects are part of the auditing targets. The expectation that the consultant’s audit and technology units are sequestered in their internal operations is an illusion. Nigeria needs to fix this loophole as our professional maturity is still at infancy.

I am troubled on what I am learning from the CBN’s leaked audio. Those books were audited and certified fine! But when the same guy auditing you is asking for advisory business on technology services, independence goes away. You do not allow that in electronic design – you make sure signals have their clear paths, uncorrupted by noise. Lumping advisory and auditing services under one firm is evil and it corrupts!

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