External Financial Control Institutions and the Socio-Economic Transformation of Nigeria: A Qualitative Assessment

The failure of Nigeria to achieve impressive socio-economic transformation despite her enormous financial resources has been partly linked to the ineffectiveness of the two external Financial Control Institutions, the Supreme Audit Institutions (SAI) and the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), whose functions include the curtailment of financial corruption and gross financial mismanagement of public funds. Drawing from extensive literature, this paper carries out a qualitative assessment of SAI and PAC with a view to identifying the underlying causes of their ineffectiveness. The specific constraints and common challenges against the effective and positive impact of these control institutions towards Nigeria‘s socio-economic transformation are found to include: the absence of adequate capacity, their lack of structural and functional independence, the poor attitude of Nigeria parliament to audit reports , the ineptitude of the anti-corruption agencies and the judiciary in the prosecution of indicted public officers, and more importantly the pervading influence of official corruption. The onerous recommendation is that the Nigeria government should review all its legislations and policies as they affect SAI and PAC effectiveness and to also muster the necessary political will, boldness and sincerity of purpose to confront and eliminate these constraints. The paper concludes with the view that efforts towards remedying the challenges and constraints of SAI and PAC would yield no positive result except the pervading atmosphere and influence of corruption are doused and drastically curtailed.