Auditing in Local Governments: Panacea for Accountability, Transparency, and Ethical Standards in Grassroots Governance and Service delivery in the 21st Century

ABSTRACT : Local Governments (LGs) are grassroots government and the lowest tier in the hierarchy of federal system of government. They play important role in Grassroots Governance and Service Delivery (GGSD). But there have been evidence of poor accountability and transparency; non-compliance to established norms, standards, laws, or regulations; and series of omissions, errors, irregularities, and malpractices in financial records. This called for an independent auditing process to monitor, evaluate, and issue reports on Value For Money (VFM), accountable, transparent, and ethical manner in the use of public resources. Consequently, the study examined auditing in LGs as panacea for accountability, transparency, and ethical standards in GGSD in the 21st century. Furthermore, the study looked at auditing purposes and relevance in LGs, public account committee of the parliament, value for money audit, ethical standards of auditing, accountability and transparency, and corruption and fraudulent acts. The study adopts exploratory research design. The study concluded that auditing will strengthens public governance, accountability, transparency, ethical standards, and VFM in LGs. Moreover, auditing will reduce errors, omissions, irregularities, corruptions, fraudulent acts, and bad governances in LGs. Additionally, auditors’ independence, their efficiency and effectiveness will add value to probity, public trust, and good governance. The study recommends the adoption of E-auditing; auditors independence; management supports, continuous training and capacity building for auditors; fiscal autonomy; appropriate sanction for audit irregularities; and culture of accountability, transparency and ethical standards in LGs, while regulatory institutions should be strengthened to complement auditing process and foster GGSD.