Africa-Press – Gambia. Your child goes to see a doctor, and he is diagnosed with Malaria. You come home from work and he tells you that the doctor said he has Malaria and needs money to buy medicine. Do you tell him that was the doctor’s opinion? Or do you take the medical opinion of a doctor seriously? Of course, there are times when a doctor is wrong and you have to go to another. There are also times you doubt a doctor’s opinion and seek a second opinion. But the norm is that the doctor is right. And you take it seriously.
A doctor is the most competent authority to give advice on the health of a person. And you know what? Auditors have a similar command over finances of a country or company. A qualified auditor understands finances, laws governing it and its infrastructure in the same way doctors understand the human body and more.
The auditors collect facts, analyse them and issue you a verdict. That is what is called an AUDIT OPINION. This opinion is a product of a rigorous process. Therefore, if someone comes to tell you that an audit verdict is just an opinion, that person is not just insulting your intelligence but launching a mischievous attack to discredit audit reports.
Here is why. The next thing they say is that ‘after the audit, we give it to the police to investigate’. Well, the National Audit Office is the most competent body on financial malpractices than any institution in this country. The National Assembly relies on them. The police relies on them. Every institution relies on them.
If their professional diagnostics is considered a mere “opinion”, why do you count on that of the police? For not only is the police’s own opinion also an opinion— any conclusion of an investigation is averdict based on the analyses of presented data—and the police are far less competent institutions than the NAO when it comes to public finance in this country.
The current local government inquiry that is ongoing, it was prompted by an audit query. And though they have their own team of investigators, they still rely on audit reports for most part of their work, including public hearings. Therefore, it is simplistic to say that audit opinion is an opinion. If there is no mischievous intent to discredit auditors or audit reports, no one should say an audit report is a mere opinion.
Secondly, the idea that people implicated in an audit are innocent until proven guilty is for courts and lawyers. Not administrators. In public administration, any major allegation against an individual, especially something as serious as an audit finding, gets you fired or if you are lucky and the finding becomes inconclusive a suspension.
An investigation will be launched into the allegations, where the audit findings are inconclusive, to find out what actually happened. And while you are being officially investigated, you are sent on administrative leave.
This administration is making auditors look like fools. And it has serious consequences because in the end, nobody will take auditors seriously.
Mustapha Darboe
Source: The Standard Newspaper | Gambia
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