NIGERIAN ACCOUNTANTS' PERSPECTIVE ON DIFFERENTIAL CORPORATE REPORTING.

Abstract

The international accounting community responded by significantly raising the standards of ethical and reporting conduct through the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB in the USA) and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) following the wave of financial scandals and the global financial crises that involved accountants and accounting practise. In response, there have been numerous national corporate governance initiatives and pieces of legislation created to advance effective professional accounting practise, particularly in the handling of financial data and associated financial reporting. The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) Act No. 6 of 2011 has this context as its genesis. The Act effectively served as Nigeria's solution to this issue on a worldwide scale, with the objective of offering a comparable institutional governance framework to handle the issues that will likely shape the future of the accounting profession in Nigeria. The Act signalled the end of professional accounting groups' voluntary self-regulation and the start of formal, statutory oversight falling under the purview of the Financial Reporting Council. Through the trichotomy of a regulatory mandate—monitoring professional service areas from the platform of professionalism and legislation, aligning these services with global best practises, and boosting investor confidence—the FRC Act was created to reshape the Nigerian accounting profession and practise. After five years of operation, it is appropriate to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme. The FRC's operating dynamics are already having a big impact on the accounting industry in Nigeria.