Corporate Governance and Earnings Quality of Selected Manufacturing Companies in Nigeria

Abstract

The need to improve on earnings quality is a problem that corporate regulators strive to resolve through the establishment of various mechanisms. This study investigated the relationship between corporate governance and earnings quality of selected manufacturing companies in Nigeria. Specifically, the study examined the relationship between board of directors’ independence, internal audit quality, auditor independence and accrual quality value relevance of selected manufacturing companies in Nigeria. The ex-post facto research design was utilized while 65 selected manufacturing firms between 2008 to 2017 were used as the population. The published fact-books of companies were obtained from the Nigeria Stock Exchange. The entire 65 companies were used as the sample size for the study. The Ordinary Least Square method of regression analysis was employed to test the hypotheses through E-view 10 version software. The results revealed a positive and insignificant relationship between board of directors’ independence and accrual quality of selected manufacturing companies in Nigeria, and a positive and significant relationship between internal audit quality and accrual quality of selected manufacturing companies in Nigeria. Finally, the study revealed a positive and insignificant relationship between auditor independence and accrual quality of selected manufacturing companies in Nigeria. The study recommended that investors and managers of selected manufacturing companies that are viewed to be founded on company statute should never rely solely on the existence of non-executive board of directors to monitor and improve the quality of accruals, since in real life it may be near impossible to find board of directors that are truly “independent”. Also, company auditors saddled with the responsibility of the “policeman” and reviewing corporate financial records should collaborate with other corporate regulatory bodies, such as Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria and Security and Exchange Commission, to ensure that internal audit functions become legally independent and driven for improvement in accrual quality. Finally, professional accounting bodies in Nigeria such as Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN), whose members belong to the big 4 audit firms in Nigeria, should advice corporate bodies in Nigeria to train and retrain their accounting staff, so as to place more reliance on them rather than on the external accounting firms. This is because the auditor independence which is related to the external environment cannot alone guarantee quality in reported accruals.