Vincent Akpotaire

The legal position on the role and duties of auditors in corporate administration under the Nigerian Company Law appears to be on all fours with that of English Law contained in the United Kingdom companies Act 1989. It has been established that:

The duty of the auditor…is not to confine himself merely to the task of verifying the arithmetical accuracy of the balance sheet but to inquire into its substantial accuracy and to ascertain that it was properly drawn up so as to contain a true and correct representation of the state of the company’s affairs1.

Under Section 357 (1) of the Companies and Allied Matters Act 19902, every company is required to appoint an auditor or auditors at each annual general meeting to audit the financial statements of the company. Such Auditor is meant to hold office from the conclusion of that meeting to the conclusion of the next annual general meeting. This paper examines the position of auditors, their appointment, removal/resignation, their role, duties and responsibilities within the framework of corporate administration in Nigeria. We shall appraise the concept of Company’s Audit and its relevance in Nigerian corporate administration and attempt a comparative analysis on the standard of care and diligence required of an auditor vis–a–vis his liability to the company and third parties.

The term medical negligence1 has acquired a connotation in legal parlance that is at once evocative of both civil and criminal liability and at the same time mutually exclusive in meaning.2 This paper however concentrates on the criminal liability of medical practitioners for negligent conducts in the course of their medical practice.

 Generally, liability for negligence in the criminal law raises some fundamental questions going to the root of the legal basis of criminal responsibility.3 While negligence is recognized as a basis for criminal liability in Nigeria, neither in the Criminal Code4 nor in the Penal Code5 is a definition of criminal negligence provided. It has been suggested that the definitive content of criminal negligence is only discoverable from books, statutes and judicial dicta.6 It is submitted however, that the absence of the definition of criminal negligence does not a priori exclude from the codes clear and unambiguous provisions dealing with categories of conducts that may constitute criminal negligence.