Underlying Dimensions of the Hindrances to the Application of Forensic Accounting Techniques in Nigeria

The study identified the underlying factors that hinder the application of forensic accounting techniques in Nigeria. Data for the study were obtained from questionnaire administered on chief financial officers in Ministries, Departments and Agencies in 9 sampled States and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The application of factor analysis statistical techniques collapsed the 23 measured variables into three factors. The factors were named ‘legal factor’, ‘educational factor’ and ‘political factor’ in that order of importance. It was concluded that these three factors constitute the major hindrances to the application of forensic accounting techniques for fraud prevention and detection in Nigeria. It is recommended that the legal system should be strengthened to be able to effectively handle fraud cases; educational and training institutions should embark on the training of forensic accountant; and the government should have the political will to prosecute offenders and institutionalize policies beyond what are on ground for the effective application of forensic accounting techniques in the country.


Introduction
Nigeria as a developing economy is heavily dependent on government.The public sector therefore is the most developed strand of the economy and most fraud that is reported in the country is perpetrated in this sector (see Eddy & Akpan, 2008;Egwemi, 2012).The government coffers have become the 'pocket' for corruption, embezzlement and fraud.Hence, if there is any sector that should begin the use of forensic accounting techniques in fraud prevention and detection, it is the public sector, represented in this study by government ministries and agencies.
Many experts agree that there is an inverse relationship between the economic development and fraud (Domzalki & McGladrey, 2009).In Nigeria for example, the perennial infrastructural decay and general systemic collapse that have often held back the country's development has been linked to fraud and other corrupt practices (Thisday Newspaper, 2009;Mobolaji & Omoteso, 2009).Yet "the commonest actions against fraudsters has been disciplinary hearing and immediate dismissal from employment which has never helped matters" (Hamilton & Gabriel 2012, p. 118).
In a preliminary survey, there seem to be a general consensus on the need for the services of forensic accountants in Nigeria.However, there are factors that are hindering it use.Some respondents have these to say: The level of awareness (of forensic accounting) is very low.This is due to the fact that it is relatively new in the world over, so you should expect less from here.… (Respondent 2).
There will definitely be that relationship because the higher the awareness and the use of forensic accounting, the lesser the fraud and fraud incidences.(Respondent 1) The services are necessary so that as a nation we can improve our infrastructures since the purpose of every money will be well utilized.However, let me cry aloud that there should be one law for the people and not for a few.When there is a need to implement the law, as it was applied for Mr. 'A' let it be the same for Mr. 'B' and not differently (Respondent 3).…services of forensic accountant are very necessary in Nigeria .But the question which I think that one should ask is that will the government allow for its implementation or will it have to enforced on few people who do not have people to speak for them as we have in our current system of law where the law is only for some selected few to obey? (Respondent 4).
One is in the era of seeing tangible changes where the services of forensic accountants in public service are encouraged and necessary in the country (Respondent 5).
There are not enough forensic accountants in Nigeria.I think it may be lack of fund for the studies, forensic accounting is technology driven which implies that where the technology is still far-fetched, the application is hindered.But I think the main issue here has to do with the institutions which are not teaching FA (Respondent 2) Although we have serious infrastructural and developmental challenges in Nigeria, abuse of office power, lack of transparency and the issue of general indiscipline, I think the country is ready and I will recommend the use of forensic accounting for any establishment.There cannot be any reasonable development when all we read from the dailies is fraud here and fraud there (Respondent 1).
Nigeria is ready due to the many problems it has and the need for the country to redeem her image when it comes to the issue of corruption.Yes!I will recommend the services of forensic accountant to my establishment and to as many firms which I know need the services of a forensic accountant (Respondent 6).
In view of these, this study therefore adopted the quantitative approach in identifying the underlying factors that hinders forensic accounting practice in Nigeria.

Method of Study
A cross section survey design was adopted for the study.Data for this study was obtained from Chief Financial Officers (CFO's) in public offices (ministries, departments and agencies).These officers are in the best position to provide the needed information.This also contributed to enhancing the reliability of the data to be obtained.
The number of government ministries, departments and agencies (MDA's) in the different states selected and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja are shown in Table 1.This information was obtained from the Ministry of Information of the different State Governments and the FCT.Table 1 shows that the number of ministries and agencies of government in the various States and the FCT is 488.It has been stated earlier that the Chief Financial Officer and the Head of the internal Audit in each of the agencies and ministries were considered as key players in the use of forensic accounting techniques in fraud prevention and detection in the organisation, hence, these two officers were selected for sampling.This also serves to provide a check on the responses given from each establishment to ensure internal consistency in the data.The total number of samples in each unit was therefore multiplied by 2 resulting to 976 for the entire practitioners.
There were two sections on the survey instrument (questionnaire).Section B which measured demographic attributes of the respondents has 6 variables while section B obtained data on the perceived factors that hinder the use of forensic accounting in Nigeria, with 23 variables.Questions on this section were the Likert-scale type on a 5-point.
Of the 976 questionnaire that was distributed, only 588 were retrieved.The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and factor analysis.

Results and Discussion
Table 2 shows the demographic details of practitioners that were the subjects in this study.In terms of gender, the analysis reveals that 336 of the subjects (57.10 per cent) were males while 252 (42.90 percent) were females (Table 2).Hence, there were more male subjects in the population of the study than females.For age, no respondent was in the age category of between 18-30 years.This agrees with the expectation of the researcher since those that were expected to respond to the questions were either chief accountants or chief auditors or directors.Such people are also expected to be older in age as far as the public service is concerned.
For the other age brackets, 16 (2.70percent) of the respondents were within the age bracket of 31-40 years while 269 (45.70 percent) of the total respondents were within the range of 41 and 50 years.Similarly, 283 (48.10 percent) of the respondents were within the age bracket of 51 and 60 years while 18 (3.10percent) were above 60 years.
However, there were also 2 subjects, accounting for only 0.3 per cent of the total respondents who did not respond to that particular question.This value of 0.3 per cent is so insignificant to have any major effect on the general response rate to the question of age.Hence, most of the subjects for this study were within the ages of 41 and 60 years.Most of the intended subjects for this study were also expected to belong to this category.
In terms of highest educational qualification, Table 2 reveals that 33 (or 5.6 percent) of the respondents had senior school certificate or ordinary National Diploma.It was however surprising to the researcher that people with such educational qualification were able to climb to such a high level in the public service.However, a closer investigation of the questionnaire reveals that such people had acquired other professional qualifications which would have been considered for their promotions to such high position.Again, the total number of such people within the subjects of the study is very insignificant.
Those with BSc/HND as the highest educational qualification were 444 (or 75.5 percent) of the total respondents while 111(or 18.90 percent) had obtained additional certificates in the forms of MSc/MBA.No respondents among the subject of study had a PhD.In all, most of the study subjects have obtained a first degree or its equivalent.
Further, 426 (about 72 per cent) of the subject of the study had professional qualifications in the forms of ACCA, ICAN, ANAN, or others.There was no clear pattern of clustering.
On the other hand, 162 (about 28 percent) of our subjects do not have additional qualifications.Since most of the subject posses professional qualifications, these would have exposed them and make them to have fair knowledge of what the researcher intends to unravel.Such would certainly improve the reliability of the research findings.
Years of experience are important as far as the issue of this research is concern.The analysis of the years of experience of the subjects that were used in this study reveals that they were well experienced on the job.All the subjects had over 10 years of experience on the job.Precisely, 38(about 7 percent) had 11-15 years of experience on the job, 184 (about 31 percent) had 16-20 years of experience, 228 (about 39 percent) had between 21 and 25 years of experience and 136 (about 23 per cent) had over 25 years of experience.In view of this, the subjects were well experienced to give the needed responses to the questions that were asked.
In terms of job description, 123 respondents, representing 20.90 percent were internal auditors 322, representing 54.80 per cent were heads of departments (Accounting and Finance) while 87; representing 14.80 per cent were directors of finance /accounting.56 respondents representing 9.50 per cent hold other ranks and performed other job descriptions.
In sum, majority of the respondents belonged to the decision making class of their various accounting units and hence can influence decisions and behaviour of such units.This class of people is qualified to make responses on behalf of their units.
The factor analysis was adopted to identify the specific factors that hinder the application of forensic accounting techniques in fraud prevention and detection in Nigeria.An examination of the correlation matrix (Table 3) reveals very high correlation between the twenty three (23) variables.Over 70 per cent of the inter correlations between the variables are significant at the 0.05 confidence level.Given the percentage of significant inter-correlation between these variables; the hypothesised factor model appears to be appropriate.
The Bartlett's test of sphericity (Table 4) confirms that the correlations matrix has significant correlation among at least some of the variables.It yields a value = 34900.00and an associated level of significance <0.001 at 253 degrees of freedom.The very high Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) index of 0.919 is far greater than the value of 0.6 which is considered as the least for useful factor analysis (Udofia, 2011).Hence, the data set was adequate for factor analysis.Table 5 presents the communality of each variable, i.e. the proportion of variance in each variable accounted for by the common factors (Ho, 2006).From Table 5, the proportion of variance accounted for by the common factors is 1 for all the variables.Table 6 is the total variance explained.It shows the number of common factors computed, the eigenvalues associated with these factors, the percentage of total variance accounted for by the factors, the percentage of total variance accounted for and the cumulative percentage of total variance accounted for by the factors.Using the Kaiser (1970) criterion of retaining only function with eigenvalues of 1 or above, the first three factors were retained for rotation.These three factors accounted for 60.53, 16.82 and 9.83 per cent of the total variance respectively.That is, approximately 87 per cent of the total variance is attributable to these three factors.The remaining 20 factors accounted for only about 13 per cent of the total variance.Thus, a model with three factors may be adequate to represent the data set.From the scree plot (Figure 1), it again appears that a three-factor model should be sufficient to represent the data set.
www.ccsenThe literature review presented some weaknesses of the legal system in Nigeria, which supports this finding.For example, a Deputy Director was prosecuted for his involvement in the Police Pension fraud and confessed of stealing as much as N23 billion.He was then asked by the presiding judge, Justice Mohammed Talba of the FCT High Court, Abuja, to pay a miserable sum of N750, 000.00 naira as fine (Austine, 2013).This is a complete mockery of the country's efforts in the fight against fraud from the judiciary.The judiciary is supposed to be the hope of any forensic accounting endeavour as the profession seeks to present useful evidence at the law court.
Again, in the circumstance where no Nigerian university is offering forensic accounting courses, it was therefore not surprising to discover from the findings of this research that, the educational factor is one of those factors that hinder the application of forensic accounting techniques.The educational factor found expressions in variables such as lack of experience on the part of the available fraud examiners, lack of forensic accounting professionals, lack of training institutions, weak educational system, lack of good quality forensic analysis and lack of awareness.It has been shown from the findings of this study that education positively influences awareness.It provides an avenue for dissemination of new ideas, like the forensic accounting.Continuous lack of educational interest in forensic accounting by Nigerian universities will continue to be a major setback in the country's fight against fraud as more hands are needed in this area and educational institutions have a part to play in the provision of these more hands.
The specific variables under political factor as revealed in this study includes, abuse of office and power, impunity, lack of transparency and over-centralisation of power.Practitioners are of the opinion that this also constitutes a major hindrance to the use of forensic accounting and the general fight against fraud and corruption.It goes further to explain why politicians facing charges of fraud will be beaming with smiles, amidst cheers from supporters in court premises (Adefila, Kasum, & Olaniyi, 2005).These attitudes if not addressed will continue to pose serious threats to the application of forensic accounting in the country.Some public office holders are covered by impunity; hence, they can perpetrate fraud without being arraigned before the court as long as they remain in the office.

Conclusion
This study has identified the underlying dimensions of the hindrances to the use of forensic accounting techniques in Nigeria.The three factors identified are: legal, educational and political factors.Hence, poor legal system, inadequate forensic accounting education factors and lack of political will are the major factors that hinder the application of forensic accounting techniques in Nigeria.A conceptual model of these factors with forensic accounting has been developed.It is recommended that the legal system should be strengthened to be able to effectively handle fraud cases; educational and training institutions should embark on the training of forensic accountant; and the government should have the political will to prosecute offenders and institutionalize policies beyond what are on ground for the effective application of forensic accounting techniques in the country.The findings of this study have implications on theory and practice of the accounting profession, in general and forensic accounting, in particular.
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Table 1 .
Number of ministries and agencies in the selected states

Table 2 .
Demographic data of practitioners

Table 3 .
Correlation matrix of factors that hinder the application of forensic accounting

Table 6 .
Total variance explained

Table 7
have been highlighting, that the legal process needs to be strengthened to enable effective prosecution of fraudsters in fulfilment of the Commission's mandate.