COMPLETE SCHOOL PROJECT TOPICS & MATERIALS :
CHAPTERS: Chapter 1-5
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Abstract
The objective of this study is to investigate the whistleblowing mechanism and internal audit effectiveness in Nigerian Public Sector.. To achieve this objective some research questions were raised, hypothesis were formulated and related literature to the study were reviewed. Ninety (90) copies of the questionnaire were distributed to Federal, State and Local Government institutions within Enugu State and seventy nine (79) were filled and retrieved. Data collected were presented in Tables and analyzed using the means score, while levene’s test for equality of variances was used in testing the hypotheses with the aid of SPSS. It was found that, there are significant differences in the implementation of whistle blowing among the 3 tiers of government with more implementation at the federal government and there is significant relationship between whistle blowing policy and prevention of fraud in the ministry of finance mainly in the federal level of government. The research recommends that, there is need for developing whistleblowing policy in the states and local governments so as to enhance efficient and smooth prevention and detection of fraud, and the policy should be unified to cover the entire tiers of government for efficient and control purposes.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the study
Public sector is created by government for some reasons which include provision of social goods, public goods, and private goods at affordable prices. These objectives and other visions can only be achieved if large percentage of activities carried out by public sector is performed according to laid down rules and regulations. Government has one period or the others put in place several acts and statutes to mitigate illegal activities among her employees so that her mission would not be mirage. There are several regulatory frameworks in public sector in Nigeria. These include: the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1979 as amended 1989 and others, the Audit ordinance of 1956, the Finance (control and Management) Act of 1958, the Financial Regulation and Revenue Allocation Laws. However, this stream of rules, code of ethics, constitution, and statutes cannot operate themselves except some people are commissioned to carry them out (Adams, 2014). This has been done to some extent but the rate of playing about; playing round, and beating these regulatory frameworks it is at alarming rate. In fact, this has resulted to a sluggard: everybody eats from national cake. Government work is at ease.
On this background, all illegal and illicit activities needed to be fought with all seriousness in order to prevent fraud and corruption. Therefore, this act should be collective responsibility to fight against illegal practices. However, from available literature there are mixed conclusions or conflicting conclusions. For example, Vandekerckhove (2006) examined whistle-blowing and organization social responsibility, asserts that in organizations, law, education, culture and practice advise employees to turn a blind eye to illicit activities or wrongdoing, even should not raise their concerns internally or externally. Lee and Oh (2007) worked on corruption in Asia: pervasiveness and arbitrariness indirectly discourage whistle- blowing mechanism in their statement. They lamented that often times, failure to bribe or comply with illicit activities can make the achievable and viable project remains pending for years. Brown, Mazurski and Olsen (2008) confirm that the reality of whistleblowers would provide little justification for government or senior public sector managers to think ‘proactively’ about how to manage whistle blowing cases.
Against this background, Ponemon (1994) argues that whistle-blowing mechanism plays a vital role as a preventive and detective mechanism, if the firm explicitly incorporates reporting method that discloses incidents of wrongdoing into its internal control structure. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development wrote about whistle-blowing protection and advocates for whistle-blowing mechanism and its demonstration as well as implementation in both private and public companies (OECD, 2011). Besides, Council of Europe Civil Law Convention on corruption supported the effective establishment of whistle-blowing mechanism in 1999.
Therefore, the study is motivated to examine effective whistle blowing mechanism in the public sector.
1.2 Statement of the problem
Whistle-blowing becomes relevant because of the response of the public for greater financial accountability, financial transparency and financial integrity of financial reporting processes of organizations in recent times. The report of Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Tread way Commission in the US and Sarbanes-Oxley Act identified whistle-blowing as an important business ethics that is capable of improving the economic stability and financial reporting process of any country. Therefore, different countries of the world have incorporated whistle-blowing as part of their corporate governance guidelines and financial reporting process.
The findings above contradicts with the findings of Brown, Mazurski and Olsen (2008) whose study confirm that the reality of whistleblowers would provide little justification for government or senior public sector managers to think ‘proactively’ about how to manage whistle blowing cases.
From the Nigerian context, there are several regulatory frameworks in public sector in Nigeria. These include: the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1979 as amended 1989 and others, the Audit ordinance of 1956, the Finance (control and Management) Act of 1958, the Financial Regulation and Revenue Allocation Laws. However, this stream of rules, code of ethics, constitution, and statutes cannot operate themselves except some people are commissioned to carry them out (Adams, 2014).
Moreover, most of the a priori literatures on whistle blowing in the developed nations wereconcentrated on financial institutions. In the developing nations like Nigeria, only fewer studies were done on whistle blowing with emphasis on financial institutions which also were greeted with a lot of controversies. However, there is no known study that had been done on whistle blowing with emphasis to the public sector organizations in Nigeria. This as a result made the study under observation a necessity as whistle blowing on the public sector accountability is a dominating issue that requires empirical support.
1.3 Objective of the study
The main objective of this study is to examine whistleblowing mechanism and internal audit effectiveness in Nigerian public sector. In view thereof, whistleblowing policy is the dependent variable and prevention of fraud is the independent variable. However, the specific objectives of this study are to:
- Test the level of implementation of whistle-blowing policy among the Nigerian Public sector.
- Determine the impact of whistle blowing policy in fraud prevention in the Nigerian Public sector.
1.4 Research questions
To interrogate that assumption and evaluate the capability of the policy to energize the current ‘war against corruption’ in Nigeria, the study raised the following research questions:
- What is the level of implementation of whistle-blowing policy among the Nigerian Public sector?
- Does whistle blowing policy has any impact in fraud prevention in the Nigerian Public sector?
1.5 Hypotheses of the study
Therefore, in order to achieve that the study intends to find out the level of implementation of the policy and also whether the whistle blowing policy has any impact in preventing fraud in the Nigerian Public sector. The following hypotheses are developed to guide the conduct of this research:
HO1: There is no difference in the level of implementation of whistle blowing policy among the three tiers of governments in Nigeria.
HO2: There is no relationship between whistle blowing policy and prevention of fraud in three tiers of governments in Nigeria.