By James Ezema

The Society for West African Internal Audit Practitioners (SWAIAP) is set to hold its first Annual General Meeting (AGM) ahead of the society’s 2020 inaugural induction and investiture. The investiture tagged “Operation 1,000 inductees” and other internal audit matters, including the Society’s 2020 budget are expected to top the agenda at the AGM.

President/CEO of SWAIAP, Patrick O. Nzechukwu, in a statement issued on Friday noted that the AGM holds in Lagos on Saturday, February 29, 2020.

The statement noted that “SWAIAP was incorporated to arouse the consciousness and relevance of internal auditing in West African States, principally to institutionalize internal auditing as a foremost tool for anti-corruption, anti-wastes, inefficiencies, ineffectiveness and other forms of financial and non-financial risks through evidential assurance of effective corporate governance, risk management and internal control processes.”

According to him, the society was born to train and equip internal auditors, encourage the publishing of internal audit textbooks, both study and practice manuals, to encourage tertiary institutions and professional training institutions, including practitioners in West Africa to incorporate internal auditing in their syllabuses as it is done in other developed economies, among others.

Meanwhile, the first Executive President and pioneer of the society has drafted a bill titled: Nigerian Internal Audit Practice, Regulation and Administration Agency and Other Related Matters Bill 2013.

The bill, if promulgated into law, will empower the internal auditors to perform their watchdog and assurance services with greater independence and has great potential to enhance the knowledge and practice of internal auditing in Nigeria and enthrone sanity and stewardship decorum in our systems.

The Chief Executive of SWAIAP hopes that the bill becomes a prototype to be adopted across West African sub-region.

Culled from AbujaBizReports.com