Former President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), Ismaila Zakari, has called on President Bola Tinubu to sign the Federal Audit Bill as a replacement for the outdated 67-year-old Audit Act.
Zakari made this plea during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Friday. His statement came after he participated in a two-day Audit Reporting Training organized by FrontFoot Media Initiative.
The training, titled “X-raying State Government Audit Reports,” was conducted for 20 journalists and supported by the Collaborative Media Engagement for Development Project under the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism, with funding from the MacArthur Foundation. Zakari emphasized that the revision of the audit bill was long overdue, as the current federal law governing audits dates back to 1956.
Zakari said: “The existing law on audit at the federal level is the 1956 Audit Act.
“The information I have is that the bill was passed by the 9th National Assembly and it is before the president to assent to.
“Our prayer is that the president would quickly assent to the bill so that the standard of auditing would improve, particularly at the federal level.”
He also said there was a need for the independence of the Auditor-General for the Federation to be respected across the board.
“The auditor-general of the federation is independent and can only be removed by two third of the members of the National Assembly.
“Same applies to auditor generals at the state level,” he said.
