Audit Committee IT Expertise and Financial Reporting Timeliness Among Listed Firms in Nigeria

This study investigates the relationship between audit committee information technology (IT) expertise and financial reporting timeliness among 151 listed firms on the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX) for the period 2010 to 2024, yielding an unbalanced panel of 2,265 firm-year observations. Drawing on agency theory and resource dependency theory, we hypothesise that the presence of IT-literate audit committee members significantly reduces audit report lag, thereby enhancing the timeliness of financial disclosures. Employing ex-post facto research design and panel regression techniques — specifically pooled ordinary least squares (POLS), fixed effects (FE), and random effects (RE) models — with the Hausman test favouring the fixed effects estimator, results reveal that audit committee IT expertise (ACITE) exerts a statistically significant negative effect on financial reporting timeliness (measured by audit report lag), consistent with the prior hypothesis. Among the control variables, firm size, firm age, board independence, industry type, and ownership structure are found to reduce reporting lag. In contrast, financial leverage and CEO tenure are associated with delayed reporting. Board size yields an insignificant effect. Post-estimation diagnostics confirm the robustness of results through heteroskedasticity-consistent standard errors and Driscoll-Kraay corrections for serial correlation. The findings carry meaningful implications for regulators, policymakers, corporate boards, and investors in Nigeria’s evolving capital market, reinforcing the case for mandatory IT competency requirements for audit committees of listed firms