Dr Victoria Enape, the President, Chartered Institute of Forensic and Investigative Auditors in Nigeria (CIFIA) says that the CIFIA Bill does not pose a threat to other professional bodies.
Enape, who spoke with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Abuja, said that the bill did not amount to duplication of duties as Nigeria had no other body in the field of forensic and investigative auditing.
She appealed to the senators to disregard those appealing to them to throw out the bill.
The Public Hearing on the bill as organised by Senate Committee on Establishment and Public Service chaired by Sen. Emmanuel Paulker came up on March 15.
Enape, had during the public hearing, said the bill would help Nigeria to deepen fraud prevention, detection and preserve money in government treasury for infrastructural development.
She told the audience that the body would strengthen the anti-corruption fight by training relevant government agencies in the use of science and technology vis a vis forensic and investigative skills for auditing of financial statement.
“Our bill is not any sort of duplication; it is not a threat to any professional body in Nigeria; as we speak, there is no professional body in Nigeria that has forensic and investigative audit in their act-it is verifiable.
“We are the first to come out with a bill of this kind; if any professional body is seeing us as a threat, I want to advise them that are no threat.
“Our professional body is a step up of what has been on ground; what has been on ground is not adequate; it is as a result of the inability and inadequacies of traditional auditing to sniff out fraud, that gave rise to a new professional body called CIFIA.
“This is a new trend in the whole world thought it just came to Nigeria; if it has helped other countries to eradicate fraud and corruption, it will also help Nigeria.’’
She alleged that those opposed to the bill had been appealing to their senators through text messages and social media to throw out the bill when presented again at plenary.
According to her, it will be counter-productive to kill such a well-meaning bill; hence the need for senators to disregard such appeals to throw out the bill.
She said that there was separation of powers in the financial sector in Nigeria—Auditor-General for the Federation and Accountant-General of the Federation.
The president said that while Accountant-General prepared the financial statement, Auditor-General audited the financial statement in the traditional manner.
“Now, we are saying that we have to be a forensic audit body that will be able to audit the financial statement with the use of science and technology; fraudsters have gone digital and we have to tackle them digitally.
“Two professional bodies are too small for Nigeria; people should not see this as a proliferation of professional bodies; the issue of merging CIFIA and Chartered Institute of Forensic Accountants should not come up.
“It means there will not be checks and balances; if the senate feels like passing the two, it is better because forensic accounting deals with accounting forensically while forensic auditing deals with auditing forensically.
Enape said that CIFIA did not emanate from Nigeria but from Canada where it was headquartered; hence it could not be merged with a professional body that emanated from Nigeria.
