Issues and challenges in the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards in Nigeria

Abstract

The mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) has come with a number of challenges that need to be studied so that solutions from other countries will not be imported into our country. The decision to adopt IFRS is observed to have some weaknesses, as such, implementation of policy results in a lot of challenges. The study explores the challenges on the mandatory adoption of IFRS in Nigeria. The study adopts the questionnaire survey method to seek responses from five hundred and fifty-four respondents on their perception on the subject matter. Structured questionnaire was administered to capture the main questionnaire items. Pearson product moment correlation was employed to test the hypotheses. In testing the hypotheses, the overall result shows the significant relationship on technical related issues and logistic related issues experienced by stakeholders on adoption of IFRS, there is significant relationship between complexity and compliance with IFRS and NG-GAAP but compliance so as to increase or have access to foreign capital and complexities was not found significant. We recommend the need for training and retraining of staff to ease the challenges and in turn reduce cost of IFRS adoption. Accounting infrastructure should be strengthened.

Keywords: International financial reporting standards, issues, challenges, accountants