Auditor General faults remuneration for auditors

By Moses Emorinken, Abuja

The Office of the Auditor General of the federation (OAuGF) has described the state of remunerations and incentives for auditors as poor compared to their counterparts in other anti-corruption agencies in the country.

The Auditor General of the Federation, Anthony Ayine, disclosed this on Tuesday during the bi-annual conference of the body of federal and state auditors-general in Abuja.

According to him, “Remuneration for auditors is poor. Let me remind you that these auditors go out and examine the records of other audited entities. For these auditors, there is a risk of being tempted. It becomes very important that these auditors should be properly remunerated so that they can resist such temptations when they are tempted”.

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He called for audit institutions in Nigeria to support government in fighting corruption. “It is also important that we address the issue of poor remuneration for the auditors which is a serious challenge. For example, you send auditors to Lagos and you are not able to pay them their duty tour allowance that should enable them stay in good hotels and do their work.

You run the risk of these people being tempted by the audited entities. To prevent and avoid that, there is need for these auditors to be given their duty tour allowances, and it is also important their remuneration is good in terms of allowances”.

“For now, the audit institution in Nigeria is still tied to the civil service. In many climes, it is not like that; audit institutions are isolated from the civil service. If you compare the pay of civil audit institutions in Nigeria to other anti-corruption agencies, you will discover that it is something very discouraging. Something needs to be done in order to properly position and encourage these auditors to do their work”.

He also identified poor accounting environment as a major challenge that auditing in Nigeria is faced with. According to him, “We have a poor consciousness of having a good accounting system in place, which involves proper preparation of accounting records that are capable of drawing financial statements, which could be monthly, quarterly, or yearly.

“Today, Nigeria has adopted the International Public Sector Accounting Standard (IPSAS), which has made our ministries, departments and agencies to prepare a standalone financial statements. The question we need to examine is – do we have the capacity in terms of people who are prepared to handle the stand alone financial statements? Because expectedly, it is required that you have separate audit opinion on the stand alone financial statement before the stand alone financial statements are even consolidated by the Accountant General of the federation, and a consolidated financial statement prepared which the AuGF will examine and report upon. So, the issue of capacity building is very important.”