Achieving Transparent Ifrs Financial Reporting in Nigeria and Ghana : The B & B Model Effect

In Africa, the transparency quality of financial disclosures appears to rank below expectations after several years of adopting IFRS. Some scholars advocate for the deployment of multi investigative models as a complement during Financial Statements audit to help secure reasonable transparency in IFRS financial reporting. As a result, this study intends to ascertain the effectiveness of Benford’s Law in evaluating the faithful representation quality of IFRS financial disclosures of public listed companies. It also intends to determine whether Beneish Ratios are suitable complements in evaluating faithful representation quality of financial disclosures. Being casual comparative research, the 2009 - 2011 and 2012 - 2016 IFRS Annual Reports of 44 listed manufacturing companies in Ghana and Nigeria were evaluated. Analyses were executed using Benford's Law and Beneish Ratios (B & B Model), Chi-Square, Multiple Regression and Mann Whitney U test. Findings obtained showed that Benford's Law, upon proper deployment and application, is effective in evaluating the faithful representation quality of financial disclosures in IFRS based Financial Statements of public manufacturing companies in Nigeria and Ghana. Also, Beneish Ratios were observed to be suitable complements in evaluating the faithful representation of IFRS financial disclosures of these companies studied in both countries. Based on the above findings, it was concluded that expected reasonable transparency in IFRS financial reporting is not the case in Nigeria and Ghana despite both countries' compliance with IFRS