The World Bank on Thursday in Abuja pledged to support the country’s auditing process to ensure transparency and accountability.
Mr Edward Olowo-Okere, the Banks Director on Governance Global Practice, said this during a visit to the Auditor-General of the Federation, Mr Anthony Ayine.
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“ We want to support the process so that the accounts are completed on time; that the audits is completed on time and laid before parliament.
“And parliament also is able to do their own part of reviewing the audited accounts and take actions on time also with the executive arm responding to the recommendations that have been made by the public accounts committee.’’
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He said that timeliness was an important factor in the accountability process and the bank would assist the government in achieving the process.
“It is important for the public accounts committee to review on time and take appropriate actions, so all these things must be done timely for there to be proper accountability.’’
Earlier, Ayine commended the bank’s support to the office of the Auditor-General of the Federation.
The auditor-general, however, listed some challenges faced by the office whereby further support from the bank would be welcomed.
He listed some of the challenges to include the audit bill presently before the Senate, which would help the office have the desired audit independence.
He said:“ if we have support from the UN in this area we will appreciate it because, for now, we lack that administrative and financial autonomy as an audit institution.
“Capacity of our staff in the area of international public sector accounting standard. Training for an auditor is key; training and retraining and having skilful manpower is very necessary.
“We are still very far on the ideal IT Audit. From our assessment, we are still lacking the necessary skill to carry out effective IT audit and we will appreciate support from you on this.’’ (NAN)
