Value for Money Audit and Good Public Governance: Stakeholders’ Perception in Nigeria

Abstract

Over the past decades, public sector performance has been at the forefront of the public management debate. Along with the advent of economic and budgetary crises, and new performance management reforms, the public sector has been under constant pressure around the world to deliver good governance and restore voters' faith in government institutions through the lenses of the value for money audit 6Es (Economy, Efficiency, Effectiveness, Environment, Equity and Ethics). It is against this backdrop, this study primarily assessed stakeholders' perceptions of the impact of value for money audits on good public governance in Nigeria. Different stakeholders who benefit from government actions in Nigeria make up the study's population while purposive sampling was used to choose 150 respondents and for analysis, the study employed ordinal logistic regression. The findings demonstrated a positive association between good governance and independent variables (economy, efficiency, effectiveness, equity and ethics audit), with marginal impact coefficients of .606, .059, 1.048, 0.30 and .053, and p-values of .000, .045, 0.21, .001 and 0.033 respectively. It is concluded that routine value for money audit is found to strengthen good governance in the Nigeria public sector. The study recommended that the government should continue to reduce costs through periodic economic audits and efficient audit, as this will improve the quality of governance in the public sector. More so environment, equity and ethics should be giving emphases.