Audit Quality and Earnings Management among Nigerian Listed Deposit Money Banks

Abstract

IntroductionIn recent times, the call for reliable financial reporting has gained prominence in Nigeria and global economy at large. The capability or incapability of banks to effectively fulfill intermediate mandate has been the crux of many financial crises. Mediating between the surplus and deficit units within the economy expedites distribution of national savings, thereby improving investments and national output. In 2005, the Central Bank of Nigeria mandated every Nigerian bank to increase capital base from 2 billion naira to 25 Billion Naira in order to enhance competitiveness in the international market. Noteworthy capital market expectations were raised and banks were under pressure to achieve survival and generate higher returns to shareholders. This pressure from the Central Bank of Nigeria has occasioned banks falsifying accounts, inflating earnings and capital. The need for reliable reports has led to statutory audit that provides independent authentication of financial statements prepared by banks' directors.Auditors are instructed to report financial misdemeanors in company's accounts to increase transparency and accountability through fraud detection. Earnings are made up of accruals and cash items and accruals are basically controlled by company's stewards. Management can bloat performance of company and future earnings predictions through manipulation of accruals resulting in earnings management. Financial reports contain accounting information which different users use to appraise firm's performance. Investors use cash flow statement to make investment decisions thereby creating room for highly motivated and intelligent management teams to manipulate the real economic operations to influence the true picture of a company's cash flow from operations. Since accrual accounting measures the performance of company by recognizing economic events irrespective of when transactions occur. Earnings management is therefore, discovered by conducting tests on the components of accrual assumed to be at the managerial discretionary accruals thereby revealing information asymmetries. Accounting scandals experienced in the last few years have affected the regulators' trust of financial statements. This scandal and its consequent results are reasons for drawing attention to quality and reliability of financial statements in the banking sector. Therefore, the absence of investors' confidence in the reported earnings influence the financial market because investors are major players in ensuring availability of capital to support the economic system. Given the above state, this study seeks to assess the effect of audit quality on earnings management in Nigerian listed deposit money banks. The broad objective of this study is to identify relationship between audit quality and earnings management of Nigerian listed money deposit banks while to assess relationship among joint audit, auditor specialization, auditor independence and audit tenure on the earnings management in the listed deposit money banks in Nigeria wo...

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