The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, ICAN, and the forensic and investigative auditors in Nigeria have clashed over the bill seeking to establish the Chartered Institute of Forensic and Investigative Auditors of Nigeria.

Findings by The PUNCH on Sunday showed that ICAN had already written the House of Representatives, urging it not to grant concurrence to the bill.

The ICAN letter, which was dated November 8, urged the House to stop the bill on the grounds that the proposed forensic institute would merely duplicate the functions of ICAN.

The Senate had successfully passed the forensic audit investigation bill on July 8 this year.

It was jointly sponsored by the Senate Majority Leader, Senator Ahmed Lawan, an All Progressives Congress member from Yobe State, and Senator Andy Uba, another APC lawmaker from Anambra State.

However, as soon as the CIFIAN bill was sent to the House for concurrence, ICAN wrote the lower legislative chamber, urging the lawmakers to stop the bill.

ICAN, among others, informed the House that it had for long been carrying out the duties of forensic accounting in the country, hence there was no need to establish a parallel institute.

ICAN said it had also been certifying accountants to conduct forensic investigation.

ICAN said it had already certified “about 500 members in forensic accounting.”

However, in their letter to the House, the CIFIAN members appealed to the legislature to ignore the position of ICAN, saying that forensic auditing was different from general accounting.

“Forensic generally, is a current trend in the whole world and it is not being regulated by accountancy professional body.

“Rather, it serves as a check to accounting work, because a forensic and investigative auditor is a watchdog and is there to unravel the manipulation of accounting facts and figures in the financial statements prepared by accountants to detect fraud and prevent it with the use of science and technology,” CIFIAN stated in its letter to the House.

In the letter, which was signed by the Pro-tem President of CIFIAN, Dr Enape Victoria-Ayishetu, CIFIAN argued that the Act that established ICAN in 1965 did not recognise forensic auditing. – Punch

– Nov. 12, 2018 @ 9:42 GMT |