About three weeks ago, my friend, Olusegun Elemo, and I had an hour-long conversation about Nigeria’s draft federal audit bill. Olusegun is the executive director of PLSI, one of Nigeria’s foremost and leading voices on audit reforms. His group has pioneered several federal and subnational efforts to improve public audits and strengthen audit institutions.
He sounded quite frustrated that Nigeria was on the verge of losing another opportunity to modernize its audit law. The struggle for a new audit law is as old as the current republic. Since 1999, at least three attempts have been made. On each occasion, the National Assembly passed the bill, but presidential assent was denied or withheld under Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo, Goodluck Jonathan, and Muhammadu Buhari.
Segun and I agree that the Federal Audit Service Bill deserves more public attention than it has received. First, public audit is critical to Nigeria’s state formation and development. The current inability of the Nigerian state to provide for the majority of the people is closely tied to its inability to account for what it appropriates. A state that is good at appropriating and poor at accounting for its appropriations cannot reasonably transform the country. Second, functional audit is closely tied to government legitimacy and, by extension, to public confidence and support for democracy. According to a recent Afrobarometer report, roughly 70 per cent of Nigerians are unhappy with the way Nigeria’s democracy is currently being run. Nigeria can improve the legitimacy of its democracy by strengthening critical accountability infrastructure that enhances the state’s ability to translate promises into opportunities and tangible improvements in living conditions.
When Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1999, the federal budget appropriation was roughly N305 billion. Today, the federal budget has grown to over N68 trillion. In less than three decades, Nigeria has built a vastly larger fiscal state. The government now collects more revenue, borrows more money, undertakes more programmes, and manages far greater public resources than at any other time in our history. Yet the critical accountability infrastructure needed to convert these gains into tangible dividends for citizens has been ignored by successive administrations.
Over the past 25 years, successive administrations have modernised nearly every component of Nigeria’s public financial management system. We established the ICPC and the EFCC. We enacted the Fiscal Responsibility Act and the Public Procurement Act. We introduced the Treasury Single Account, GIFMIS, and IPPIS. We strengthened tax administration. We expanded transparency in the extractive sector through NEITI. More recently, President Tinubu’s administration has pursued comprehensive tax reforms and macroeconomic restructuring to build a larger, more competitive economy. Yet the ‘last mile’ of public finance management, the federal audit system, remains trapped in an outdated, inconsistent framework that leaves a dangerous gap in our laws.
There is consensus on the need for a new audit bill to replace the colonial Audit Ordinance of 1956, which has continued to regulate public audits in Nigeria. The Constitution establishes the Auditor-General for the Federation (AuGF) and provides an outline of the mandate and independence, but it does not define the detailed processes, coverage, sanctions, and protections that a credible audit system requires. The Federal Audit Service Bill is intended to fill this gap and translate constitutional principles into an effective, contemporary audit regime.
So why has the audit rule, a critical pillar of accountability, been the biggest victim of Nigeria’s elite politics?
Public audit is often misunderstood. It is not an anti-corruption agency. It does not prosecute offenders. Nor is it simply an accounting exercise conducted after money has been spent. Instead, it is one of democracy’s principal constitutional safeguards. It provides the parliament and citizens with independent assurance that public resources have been managed in accordance with the law. It is a critical element of the social contract in a democracy. It ensures that taxpayers receive value for money. Without a credible audit, budget appropriations risk becoming private allocations for private benefits.
The irony is particularly striking in the case of President Tinubu. Throughout his public life, he has presented himself as an accountant, a fiscal reformer, and an institution builder. His administration has shown political courage by pursuing reforms that previous governments deemed too costly, including removing fuel subsidies, implementing exchange-rate reforms, and pursuing ambitious tax reforms. But every accountant understands that sound public financial management rests on two inseparable pillars. The first is raising public revenue. The second is assuring citizens that public expenditure is lawful, economical, efficient, and effective. As an accountant, President Bola Tinubu knows this. So why is the president unsure and dithering over the Federal Audit Service Bill?
One of the highest true costs of a weak audit system is the gradual normalisation of impunity. For years, the Auditor-General and the Public Accounts Committees of the National Assembly have complained that many Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) fail to submit audited financial statements within the legally required period, submit incomplete accounts, ignore audit queries, or refuse to appear before Parliament to account for their allocations. Several Auditor-General’s reports have highlighted unsupported expenditures, procurement irregularities, unretired advances, abandoned projects, idle assets, failures to remit public revenue, and violations of financial regulations.
During a National Assembly workshop on audit compliance in 2021, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Public Accounts Committee, Hon. Oluwole Oke, revealed a startling picture of the state of public accountability. He disclosed that 65 federal agencies had never been audited since their establishment, while another 12 MDAs had not been audited between 1993 and 2010. Even more disturbing was the steady deterioration in compliance with audit requirements. According to the Committee, 76 MDAs failed to submit audited accounts in 2011; 85 in 2012; 109 in 2013; 148 in 2014; 215 in 2015; and an astonishing 323 MDAs failed to submit audited accounts in 2016. Civil society organisations reviewing the report subsequently urged the National Assembly to investigate transactions amounting to trillions of naira. They posed a central question: should any Ministry, Department, or Agency that has failed to submit audited accounts, refused to respond to audit queries, or persistently ignored invitations from the Public Accounts Committee remain eligible for fresh budgetary appropriations?
The Auditor-General’s report on the 2021 financial year questioned more than N110 billion spent without lawful budgetary appropriation. It also identified roughly N323.5 billion in unsupported expenditures that require explanation. Whether every questioned amount ultimately proves to involve fraud is beside the point. When an audit report raises questions, MDAs have a constitutional responsibility to provide explanations. Otherwise, there should be sanctions. This is what the Federal Audit Service Bill aims to address: turning audit from a frustrating exercise in report-writing into a regime in which infractions attract real, enforceable penalties.
Imagine a publicly listed company refusing to produce audited financial statements, ignoring its external auditors, and then asking shareholders to approve a larger operating budget the following year. No responsible board would tolerate it. The government should not be held to a lower standard than the private sector. Appropriations have become routine. Accountability is negotiated by powerful agencies. They return year after year for more appropriations without accounting for previous allocations, defy calls to appear before legislative committees, and ignore public pressure. It is a case of rewarding bad behavior with Nigeria’s commonwealth.
That is precisely why the Federal Audit Service Bill matters. Its purpose is to modernise an outdated legal framework, strengthen the operational independence of the Auditor-General, improve compliance with audit processes, and ensure that constitutional oversight no longer depends solely on the goodwill of those being audited. At its core, the bill repeals the obsolete 1956 Audit Ordinance and establishes a new Federal Audit Service, a corporate body with perpetual succession, guided by a Federal Audit Board that oversees recruitment, promotion, discipline, and conditions of service for audit staff. This institutional architecture is designed to insulate the AuGF from partisan interference and to attract and retain high-quality professional staff for a specialised, technically demanding function.
For the first time, the bill establishes a competitive, transparent appointment process and clear qualifications for anyone seeking to be the Auditor-General. It supplements existing constitutional provisions on removal with mandatory fair-hearing safeguards: notice of intention to remove, stated reasons, and a defined timeline for the AuGF to respond, personally or through legal representation. This balance between independence and accountability reflects global standards, such as the Lima and Mexico Declarations on Supreme Audit Institutions.
Crucially, the bill expands the functions and powers of the Auditor-General beyond traditional financial audits. It explicitly mandates value-for-money and performance audits, forensic audits, audits of special funds, classified expenditure, donor grants and loans, disaster-related funds, subsidies, counterpart-funded projects, and public-private partnerships. It grants the AuGF unrestricted access to information, books, documents, property, and persons necessary to discharge these responsibilities, the power to summon and take evidence on oath, to investigate where there is prima facie evidence of wrongdoing, to surcharge unlawful or unsupported expenditures, and to direct the withholding of emoluments from any official who fails to respond to audit queries within 30 days. These powers close the gap in which audit findings are ignored without consequence. The bill is transformative as it is innovative.
The bill also modernises how audit interacts with other parts of the system. Internal auditors across federal offices and courts will submit regular (monthly, quarterly, half-yearly) reports to the AuGF, creating a continuous flow of information rather than sporadic, delayed disclosures. Audit reports will be expressly declared public documents and uploaded online after submission to the National Assembly, enabling the media, civil society, and citizens to scrutinise performance and follow the money. A mandatory exit conference between the AuGF and each auditee ensures that audit findings are communicated transparently and that institutions have a final opportunity to respond before reports are finalized.
Timeliness, one of the chronic weaknesses of Nigeria’s audit regime, is addressed head-on. Accounting officers of MDAs and federal corporations must submit their financial reports and audited statements within 90 days of the end of the financial year. The Accountant-General of the Federation must submit the consolidated federal financial statements by June 30 of the following year. The National Assembly is now required to publish its consideration of the Auditor-General’s report within defined timelines (120-150 days), while MDAs are given specific periods, 15 days for performance audit drafts and 30 days for other reports, to respond to audit observations. These deadlines replace open-ended delays with a framework in which late reporting and non-response carry consequences.
Under the current regime, most consequences for audit infractions have been administrative and bogged down in bureaucratic processes that rarely result in deterrent penalties. The new bill creates explicit offences and penalties, consistent with constitutional fair-hearing requirements, to ensure that the repeated financial felonies and misdemeanors year after year are no longer cost-free. In doing so, it seeks to end the familiar cycle in which the Auditor-General submits a report, the Public Accounts Committees hold hearings and issue recommendations, and MDAs simply move on as if nothing has happened.
President Tinubu now has an opportunity to complete one of the most important unfinished reforms of the Fourth Republic. Assenting to the Federal Audit Service Bill would strengthen the last mile of public finance management, reduce revenue leakages, improve efficiency in public spending, enhance investor confidence, and give real teeth to Nigeria’s anti-corruption architecture. It would align Nigeria’s audit framework with international standards, close a 70-year legal gap, and provide citizens with timely, accessible information about how their commonwealth is managed.
If the Federal Audit Service Bill contains constitutional or administrative defects, those concerns should be clearly communicated to the National Assembly and the Nigerian people. They should be debated openly and addressed through amendment. The worst outcome is silence: a continued withholding of assent without public reasons, while impunity deepens and the fiscal state grows on weak foundations.
As Nigeria counts down to the 2027 elections, there is a heightened risk that critical reforms, including the Federal Audit Bill, may be lost to politics. What would President Tinubu like his legacy to be when the story of audit reform is told: a president who stood by as impunity prevailed, leaving Nigeria to wobble and stumble with a hollowed-out audit regime, or one who stood for a legitimate and accountable democracy?
Why won’t the President sign the Federal Audit Service Bill now and finally grant the Auditor-General independence, powers, and a clear mandate to follow the money without fear or favour?