Dr. Iheanyi Anyaghara, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Regulatory Compliance Readiness Advisors Limited, has said that independence of the auditor is a critical success factor in audit work.

Anyaghara who spoke at the Audit Committee Conference held in Lagos recently, said that “independence transforms technical audit work into credible, trusted assurance”. He argued that without independence, assurance collapses into affirmation and oversight becomes a ritual.

Expatiating, Anyaghara said that independence anchors public trust in financial reporting, governance structures, and institutional integrity, pointing out that it enables auditors and audit committees to speak truthfully when truth is contested or inconvenient.

He also said that independence requires active vigilance against subtle distortions, attentiveness to emerging risks and courage to resist incentives and relationships that pull judgement off-centre.

However, he said that independence is fragile because human cognition is fragile, relationships are powerful, and organizational environments reward alignment while discouraging dissent. Sustaining independence, he said, requires habits of skepticism, reflection and moral resolve.

Dwelling on audit committee at the conference, Doyin Owolabi, former President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN), charged audit committees to demonstrate informed oversight and vigilant questioning in order to reduce the likelihood of financial misstatement.

In his presentation at the conference entitled Gate-Keeping: Detecting Error and Fraud in Financial Reporting, he said gate-keeping requires a posture that is informed, vigilant and attending. According to him, gatekeepers ensure that financial statements reflect economic reality. He said their responsibilities require them to be informed, vigilant and attending to inconsistencies, signals and emerging risks.

Audit Committees, in particular, Owolabi advised, must demonstrate informed oversight and vigilant questioning to reduce the likelihood of misstatement, while internal auditors must attend to the details of control operation and reporting processes.

Corroborating the thoughts of Owolabi, Williams Erimona, Partner Assurance Services, EY Nigeria, said that audit committee as guardian of truth must shift from passive reviewer to active navigator. This, he said, requires interrogating management’s assumptions, challenging narratives, and grounding oversight in evidence, pointing out that navigating requires capability, courage, and presence.

As navigator, he said that the audit committee must see clearly, anticipate wisely and adapt resiliently.

Focusing on internal audit at the conference, Festus Ogunmokun, former Chief Audit Executive, Nigerian Institute of Management and West African Portland Cement Company (WAPCO), said that the consequences of marginalising internal audit could be dire for business organisations.

Ogunmokun in his presentation titled Internal Audit: Guarding the Truth from Inside said internal audit marginalisation could lead to corporate failure.

Citing some cases, he said internal audit marginalisation cost Emron $60 billion in market capitalisation, led to the missing of 1.9 billion euros by Wirecard, and the concealing of $1.2 billion for years in Toshiba.

He said that internal audit has the mandate of not just detecting irregularities in business organisations but to also prevent them.

According to him, to detect irregularities, internal audit must have investigative acuity to see what has already gone wrong and what is going wrong. He pointed out that this requires examining evidence without bias and following signals wherever they may lead. Preventing irregularities, he said, requires strengthening controls before failure occurs, which involves risk identification, control reinforcement, and ethical embedding.

The Audit Executive also said to detect irregularities, internal audit must find inconsistencies, and early signs of misconduct, behavioural anomalies, and unexplained variances that contradict reasonable expectation in context. In addition, it must control overrides and workarounds, especially those repeated and undocumented.