AUDIT COMMITTEE ATTRIBUTES AND AUDIT QUALITY OF LISTED COMMERCIAL BANKS IN NIGERIA

Résumé fourni par la source

This study investigates the effect of audit committee attributes (financial expertise, tenure, gender diversity, and independence) on audit quality (audit fees) of listed banks in Nigeria from 2015 to 2024. Using a balanced panel of 50 observations across five banks, the study employs panel least squares regression to examine the relationship between committee characteristics and audit costs. Descriptive statistics and correlation analyses indicate that the data are reasonably normally distributed and suitable for regression modelling, with no severe multicollinearity among the independent variables. The empirical findings indicate that audit committee financial expertise has a positive and statistically significant effect on audit fees, suggesting that committees with skilled members demand higher audit effort. Audit committee tenure also exhibits a positive and significant impact, implying that longer-serving members enhance oversight, thereby increasing audit costs. Gender diversity shows a positive but not statistically significant effect, indicating that the proportion of female members does not meaningfully influence audit fees among the sampled banks. In contrast, audit committee independence is negatively and significantly associated with audit fees, suggesting that more independent committees improve monitoring efficiency, potentially reducing audit costs. These findings are consistent with theoretical expectations from Agency Theory and the Resource-Based View (RBV), where expertise and experience enhance oversight capacity, while independence strengthens accountability. The study recommends that banks should prioritize recruiting audit committee members with strong financial expertise, ensure a balanced tenure structure to maintain effective oversight, promote meaningful gender diversity in committees and strengthen independence standards to enhance monitoring efficiency.

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