CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND FINANCIAL STATEMENT FRAUD IN THE NIGERIAN OIL AND GAS SECTOR

Abstract

The study examined corporate governance characteristics and financial statement fraud in Nigerian oil and gas corporations. In order to emphasize the conflicting results in the literature, the empirical review examines earlier research works on corporate governance and financial statement fraud. The study used secondary data extracted from the annual reports of nine (9) oil and gas companies listed on the Nigeria exchange group from 2013 to 2022. To determine the possibility of financial statement fraud, the panel least squares analysis was employed for empirical analysis while the Beneish M-score model was used to measure financial statement fraud. The results demonstrated that board gender diversity and board audit committee do not significantly affect financial statement fraud, whereas board financial expertise and audit committee did. The study recommended that corporate governance is significance in preventing financial statement fraud.