An assessment of the quality of auditors’ reports in the Nigerian banking industry

The preparation, presentation, analysis, and interpretation of financial statements of an organization are major functions of the accounting system. This paper therefore, assesses the quality of auditor’s reports in the Nigerian Banking Industry, with a view to ascertaining the level of reliance such reports should enjoy from users. The study X-rayed management letter and the role of the audit committee on financial reporting performance of the Nigerian Banking sector. Primary and secondary data were employed. The respondents were selected randomly from a stratified sample. Ten (10) Banks and their auditors were sampled out for the study, covering a period of five (5) years (2004-2008). The Pearson product moment correction coefficient was used to test the two hypotheses. The paper discovers that the quality of auditor’s report is very significant to the assessment of a bank’s performance, and that auditors’ management letters contain useful comments on the internal control weaknesses observed during an audit. The paper recommends that implementation of auditors’ recommendations contained in management letters should be timely in order to close gaps and rectify weaknesses likely to cause fraud, thereby adding more reliability to the final report of the auditor. -- quality ; auditors report ; industry ; bank