The House of Representatives Committee on Delegated Legislation has ordered the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRC) to provide the committee with copies of the CBN’s 2025 audited accounts as submitted to it, its review of those accounts, and its official position on the concerns raised by President Bola Tinubu’s Special Investigator of the apex bank’s financial accounts, Jim Obazee, for the year.
The chairman of the committee, Hon. Olufemi Bamisile, confirmed that the committee’s directive had been conveyed to the FRC’s Executive Secretary, Dr. Rabiu Olowo, in a letter dated September 22 this year.
According to the lawmaker, the committee requested the Council to provide the committee with copies of the CBN’s 2025 audited accounts as submitted to the FRC, the Council’s review of those accounts, and its official stance on the concerns raised by the investigator within one week.
The chairman clarified that the committee’s request was sequel to the serious allegations raised by Obazee concerning the CBN’s audited financial statements, necessitating the committee to give the FRC one week to submit the apex bank’s 2024 and 2025 audited accounts, along with records of the Council’s approval of those statements.
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It would be recalled that earlier this month, at the commissioning of the FRC’s Lagos headquarters, Obazee called for the withdrawal and restatement of the published CBN’s 2025 audited financial statements, noting that the publication is only summary accounts rather than the full audited financials and omitting key audit matters identified by external auditors Ernst & Young as well as KPMG.
The Special Investigator said: “The 2024 summary financial statement had a lot of financial reporting issues. I had thought that the FRC had called the CBN to order on it until I saw the CBN ‘summary consolidated and separate financial statements for the financial year ended 31 December 2025’ released by the CBN on July 29, 2026. The questionable issues in these financial statements are nothing but shocking, brazen, and vexatious.
“If these are the financial statements that the CBN transmitted to the President and the National Assembly in compliance with Section 50(1) of the CBN Act, 2007, the CBN has deceived the President and the National Assembly. They certainly have called every Nigerian a ‘financial reporting illiterate’ since they released the said financial statements on the World Wide Web for the entire world to see. If the CBN gave the President and the National Assembly a different set of financial statements from what they released on the internet, it would still have the same deceptive effect”, Obazee added.
The House of Representatives Committee’s chairman, noted that Obazee’s written speech, distributed at the FRC event, highlighted several irregularities in the apex bank’s audited financials that touch on the integrity of both the document itself and the bank’s board.
The letter partly reads: “The alleged irregularities, as detailed by the Special Investigator, if found to be true, also call into question your role as a financial statement regulator and raise concern that audited financials of many organisations, both public and private, could be mere papers if the CBN audited financials raise doubt like this.
“In view of your role as the supreme regulator in the country, as enshrined in sections 7(2a), 8(1a, b, d, e, f, g, h, and n) and 59 of the FRC Act 2011, empowering you to supervise the CBN and scrutinise the apex bank’s accounts and those of others, our committee is requesting you to provide us with copies of the audited accounts, the approvals given to the government banker on the audited accounts, and your views on the remarks by Mr. Obazee.
“We are concerned that the board of the bank and the FRC, which reviewed and approved the audited accounts, have not made any rebuttal or public statement to tell Nigerians to disregard the concerns raised by Mr. Obazee”, Bamisile added.
The lawmaker stated that the committee would invite the Executive Secretary of the FRC to appear before it, at a date to be determined by the House, so that he can share his views on the Special Investigator’s claims on the CBN’s audited financial accounts for the year under review.
By its statutory mandate, the FRC has a critical role in ensuring transparency, credibility, and investor confidence in Nigeria’s financial reporting by setting standards in accounting, auditing, actuarial practice, valuation, and corporate governance, among other areas.
