Audit Committee Characteristics and Financial Restatement of Quoted Non-Financial Firms in Nigeria

Abstract

This study investigates whether there is any relationship between audit committee characteristics and financial restatement. Using secondary data over the period from 2005 to 2020 of 76 non- financial firms, the results of the generalized methods of moments (GMM) reveal that audit committee independence, audit committee diversity, audit committee meetings and audit committee expertise are positively significant with financial restatement while total audit committee size is negatively insignificant with it. The overall results shows that although most of the audit committee characteristics significantly influenced financial restatement, none of them helped in reducing managers tendencies to reduce the practices of restating previously reported financial statements. The study concludes with some recommendations for better performance reporting