An Empirical Analysis of Audit Expectation Gap in Nigeria

The main objective of this paper is to establish whether or not the problem of audit expectation gap exist in Nigeria, and whether those areas of concern, (areas that brought about the misunderstanding between the public and the audit profession) could be identified and measures could be taken to either eliminate them or reduce them to the barest minimum. To achieve this, the paper developed questionnaire based on the method used in the literature. The process ensures that data is collected for the public’s expectation on the issues of the expectation gap on the one hand, and then subsequently and side by side, we compared the issues with the audit authorities’ required or expected perception. The data collected was analyzed using a five-point likert type scale anchored by a five scale from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. Furthermore, to test for the significant expectation gap between the two groups of respondents, both the parametric and non parametric statistical tests were used. The paper found that there is expectation gap in the country as evidenced in the views of the respondents. The first issue investigated reveals that there is wide expectation gap between the views of the auditors and non auditors in terms of the quality of audit report. The inferential statistics which tests whether there is significant difference in the opinion of auditors and non-auditors on the improvement of company audit in Nigeria shows that there is significant difference in the mean opinion of auditors and non- auditors on the issues of the expectation gap. The paper therefore concluded that there is wide gap on the understanding of the role of the auditors by the public. Based on the findings of the paper, we recommended that there is the need for continued sensitization of the public, by both the auditing profession and other stake holders on the role and duties of the auditor to avoid unreasonable expectation by the public.