Capability requirements on fraud prevention in the Nigeria public sector: perception of forensic accountants and auditors

The objective of the study is to investigate the skills, Knowledge and ethics requirements from the perception of forensic accountants and auditors on fraud prevention in the Nigerian public sector. Out of the 500 questionnaires distributed to the respondents, 312 questionnaires were used for the analysis in this study. The respondents are forensic accountants and auditors from the Office of Accountant General of the Federation and the Auditor General for the Federation in Nigeria. The statistical analysis tools employed are the Statistical Package for Social Science (IBM SPSS version 22.0 for Windows) and Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling! (PLS-SEM)version 3.2.3). Six hypotheses are developed in the study. Three were tested through the use of the PLS-SEM Algorithm and Bootstrapping techniques regarding their internal consistency reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and direct relationships. Furthermore, the other three hypotheses regarding the comparison of groups (forensic accountant and auditor) were tested through non-parametric statistics (the Mann-Whitney U Test). The results of the analysis provided support for the hypothesized relationships as well as the hypothesized comparison of groups. Furthermore, the significant positive relationship of skills, knowledge and ethics (forensic accountants and auditors) indicated that the variables are essential requirements in enhancing fraud prevention in the Nigerian public sector. Similarly, it was found that forensic accountants have higher levels of the skills, knowledge, and ethics on fraud prevention than auditors. The study, therefore, concluded that auditors in the public sector environment should improve their capability requirements in enhancing competency towards fraud , prevention.