The major corporate collapses and related frauds which occurred in Nigeria and around the world have raised doubts about the credibility of the operating and financial reporting practices of quoted companies in Nigeria. This stirred a number of professional and regulatory organizations to recommend reforms that will improve transparency in financial reporting and thereby increase audit quality and corporate governance practices. Although evidence of corporate governance practices and audit quality exists from developed economies, very scanty studies have been conducted in Nigeria where corporate governance is just evolving. Therefore, this study provides evidence on corporate governance, audit quality, and firm related attributes from a developing country, Nigeria. Logistic regression was used in investigating the questions that were raised in the study. Findings from the study show that ownership by non-executive director has the possibility of increasing the quality of auditing. Evidence also exist that size of the company and business leverage are important factors in audit quality for companies quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. The study suggests that the composition of non-executive directors as members of the board should be sustained and improved upon in order to enhance audit quality.

Optimal decision-making is based on the quality of information available to the decision maker. Financial statements published by companies are the major sources of financial information available to investors and other stakeholders of the company. The credibility of these financial statements has very salient implications for the quality of decisions that investors can make. By using primary data collected from two hundred and forty eight respondents, and secondary data from twenty quoted companies in Nigeria, we sought to determine the relationship between corporate governance and the credibility of financial statements. The secondary data was analysed using multiple regression, while the primary data was used to test hypotheses using the chi-squared test. We find that including non-executive directors on the board, and compliance with audit committee composition as provided by the Nigerian Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) 1990 are likely to enhance the credibility of financial statements. We did not find evidence to suggest that CEO duality or absence of institutional shareholding would have negative effect on the credibility of financial statements. We recommend that apart from including non-executive directors on the board and ensuring that the composition of the audit committee complies with corporate regulatory framework, stakeholder must constantly assess the credibility of the financial statements by assessing the benefits accruing to them in relation to their financial exposure to the organization.

Educational stakeholders have continued to express concerns over the poor academic performance of Nigerian students at virtually all levels of academic engagements. This paper investigated personal factors as predictors of students' academic performance in the South-Western Nigeria. The study employed the ex post facto design using a survey design and a multiple regression model. The samples used for the study consisted of 1,100 (200 and 300) National Certificate of Education (NCE) students in Federal, State and Private NCE-awarding institutions in South Western Nigeria, using stratified sampling techniques. The validated research instruments used for the study had the following psychometric properties: Cronbach alpha (α) [0.79 (students) and 0.73 (lecturers); Guttman split-half 0.78 (students) and 0.71 (lecturers; and Spearman-Brown equal length results were 0.69 (students) and 0.70 (lecturers)]. The study found that a number of personal factors like students' interests, home environment, parental support and study habits were significant predictors of students' academic achievement in the Colleges of Education sampled. On the other hand, students' perception of course and self-concept were not found to be significant predictors of academic achievement. The study proffered a number of recommendations to improve the quality of educational policy outcomes geared towards improving students' educational performance and hence enhance the achievement of national economic goals.

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Towards the end of the nineteenth century, there were celebrated cases of corporate frauds and financial misappropriation in corporate giants. The series of frauds have left a sense of doubt about the "unbiasedness" of external auditors to render an attest function on the credibility of published financial statements. In this light, this research sought to empirically investigate into the perception of auditor independence in Nigeria. A cross-sectional survey was conducted on the opinions of randomly selected lecturers of auditing, practising auditors, stockbrokers, shareholders and managers. Primary data was extensively relied upon. In addition to the primary data, secondary data from annual reports were also used. The data collected were used to answer research questions and test hypotheses. Test of hypotheses was performed using Pearson Correlation and Kendall's measure of concordance at a 0.05 level of significance. The outcome of the tests showed that the selected respondents perceived size of audit fee as the most influencing factor, capable of deterring auditor independence in Nigeria. It was also observed that existing laws were obsolete and need to be updated to make them relevant.Keywords: statutory auditor, independence, stakeholder * Corresponding author: sbaadeyemi@yahoo.co.uk S e r b i a n J o u r n a l o f M a n a g e m e n t Serbian Journal of Management 6 (2) (2011) 247 -267www.sjm06.com DOI: 10.5937/sjm1102247A held accountable. Beattie and Fearnley (2002) pointed out that financial audit remains an integral part of corporate governance.Despite the prominence ascribed to external audit function, the sovereignty of the external auditor is an issue currently attracting scholarly scrunity. Mautz and Sharaf (1961) in Arnold et al.(1999) noted that, auditors must be constantly aware of factors that affect the audit environment which can influence or harm their independence in other to ensure confidence of investors. Supporting this statement, Xu and Wang (2008) reiterated that independence has long been recognized as the most important defining characteristic of the public accounting profession.However, the spate of corporate failure in developed and developing economies all over the world, have stirred the quest to ascertain if the failures are associated with the independence required of statutory auditors. Byrne (2001), as well as Ayvaz and Pehlivanli (2010) expressed that objectivity or "independence of mind" is essential for the exercise of professional judgement, which has continued to be an important topic. In the same vein, Callaghan et al. (2009) identified auditor independence as a necessary condition for effective auditing. In the light of these statements, this research sought to empirically examine the independence of statutory auditors in Nigeria, with emphasis on same selected audit firms. Statement of the ProblemAdelaja (2009) expressed that credible financial information is vital to the growth of any economy; also auditors are expected to be independent and objective in ...