Inclusive Application of SAS No. 99 in the Effective Deterrence of Fraudulent Financial Reporting in Nigeria: Perception of Professional Accountants in Practice, Industries and Academics

Abstract

The study focuses on the inclusive application of SAS No. 99 in the effective deterrence of fraudulent financial reporting in Nigeria. Being a perceptive study, the exploratory research design was adopted. A total of 91 samples were judgmentally selected comprising practicing accountants in the industries, professional auditors and the accounting academics in Enugu and Anambra States respectively. The Two way ANOVA statistical tool, using SPSS 17.0, was deployed in testing the two hypotheses formulated for this research work. The outcome of the analyses showed that there exist no significant difference in the opinions of the selected accountants in Enugu and Anambra on how auditors primary objectives of forming opinion on the true and fair view and absence of material misstatement in companies’ financial statement will be breached if SAS 99’s core emphasis on fraud detection and deterrence is upheld in Nigeria as part of auditors’ audit primary responsibilities, This implies that any attempt to mandatorily maintain SAS 99 core emphasis (fraud detection) as auditors’ audit obligation in Nigeria will breach her existing primary audit objective of merely forming opinion on the true and fair view of companies’ financial statement. We also found out that there exists no significant difference in the opinions of selected accountants in Enugu and Anambra on how any widening of the scope of auditors’ responsibility to include fraud detection will trigger a corresponding rise in the cost of audit thus affecting audit fees so charged. We therefore recommended that the applicable/existing Nigeria Standards on Auditing (NSA) be reviewed afresh to reflect relevant guidelines of SAS 99 especially as it concerns brainstorming, in order to boost Nigeria auditors’ fraud detection and skeptical skills towards effectively deterring fraudulent and material sensitive erring financial disclosure practices among publicly listed and privately owned organisations in Nigeria.

Keywords: Brainstorming, Cost of audit, Fraud detection, Fraudulent financial reporting, SAS 99, True and fair view

JEL Classification: M4, M42