‘Public sector organisations lose 60% annual income to corruption’

The Association of Forensic and Investigative Auditors (AFIA) has estimated that 60 percent of annual revenues of government agencies are lost to corruption in Nigeria.

If that estimate is anything to go by, Nigeria may have lost in excess N2 trillion to corruption in 2016 following a revenue profile of about N4 trillion in 2016.

The President of the association, Mrs Victoria Ayishetu Enape raised the alarm during a training and induction of new members, titled “Transition to Forensic and Investigative Audit.”

She said there is increasing rate of fraud and corruption in public sectors in Nigeria and the African continent at large.

“Government has lost a lot of money in the past few years to fraud which has emptied some country treasury’s like that of Nigeria, and this is due to the inability and inadequacies of traditional auditing process and reporting” she noted.

“Alarming increase of financial fraud, inability of internal audit to prevent and sniff out the financial fraud has given rise to new profession known as forensic and investigative audit,” she said.

The president noted that, with forensic auditing entrenched in the public accounting architecture, frauds in government will be reduced to an insignificant level.

Enape said that while the regulatory measures and internal controls in reporting requirements help to lessen the possibilities for falsified activities to take place, history has shown that indigenous employees could manipulated even the best control systems for personal gain.

She explained that forensic and investigative auditors were trained with advanced auditing knowledge which enables them to see and detect what Statutory Auditors cannot see.

She called on the Nigerian government to patronise Nigerian forensic auditors to grow Nigeria by ensuring the speedy passage of the Chartered Institute of Forensic and Investigative Auditors in Nigeria Bill, which is currently at the Senate.

“Our work is to prevent, detect and put in place some measures to stop the wrong from taking place in future, through the use of science and technology.