compliance with statement of accounting standards and performance of nigerian banks

banks play important roles in promoting national development. in order to provide efficient services and to perform their statutory roles effectively, banks are required to comply with established standards. in nigeria, the statement of accounting standards (sas), companies and allied matters act (cama) and the central bank of nigeria’s directives and regulations provide guidelines to banks in the preparation and presentation of the records of their financial transactions. in recent time, some nigerian banks appear to be engaging in non-standardized and unprofessional practices, which could lead to distress and liquidation. the objectives of this study therefore are to assess the level of nigerian banks’ compliance with statement of accounting standards as established by the nigerian accounting standards board and appraise the relationship between level of compliance with statement of accounting standards and performance of nigerian banks. twenty selected banks quoted on the nigerian stock exchange constituted the target sample and these were banks whose annual financial reports for the period of study were fully available. both primary and secondary sources of data were adopted in carrying out the study. a researcher-designed questionnaire was used to obtain data from senior and managerial staff of each of the twenty sampled banks. the instrument was structured to accommodate the sixteen statements of accounting standards which are related to banks and used in the assessment of banks’ compliance. twenty five questionnaires were administered to the staff of each of the twenty selected quoted banks. thus, a total of five hundred randomly selected respondents participated in the study. the annual financial reports of the selected banks from 2005 – 2009 (post-consolidation era) were also used. the collected data were analyzed using kruskal wallis test, camel ratios, analysis of variance (anova). based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that the nigerian accounting standards board (nasb) should overhaul and properly equip its monitoring unit in order to ensure better banks’ compliance with accounting standards and to take appropriate actions against defaulting banks.