Audit Committee Attributes and Audit Report Lag of Listed Non-financial Firms in Nigeria

Abstract

Financial reporting timeliness is one of the qualitative features of a relevant financial report. However, there have been delays by some companies in submitting the report audited above the 90-day regulatory deadline provided. It is in line with this that this study seeks to examine the effect of audit committee attributes and audit report lag of listed non-financial firms in Nigeria over a period of 10 years across the sector. The dependent variable for the study is audit report lag, while the independent variable is audit committee attributes proxied by audit committee meeting and audit committee composition. The study employed a truncated Poisson regression to analyze the data. It was found that the audit committee meeting has a negative and significant impact on the timeliness of the financial report of listed non-financial firms in Nigeria. This implies that an increase in audit committee meetings significantly reduces audit delay of non-financial firms in Nigeria and vice versa.