Forensic Auditing as a Tool for Curbing Financial Malpractices in Tertiary Institutions: A Comparative Study of Federal and State Universities

The financial malpractices in tertiary institutions in Nigeria is a continued and documented governance failure which affects the academic quality and public trust in tertiary institutions and its capacity. The two types of universities, federal universities funded primarily from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) and subventions from the federal government, and state universities funded from state government allocations and internally generated revenue (IGR), have structurally different financial governance environments which could affect the nature of financial malpractices and the effectiveness of forensic audit as a remedy. The paper discusses the concept of forensic auditing, a mechanism that will help prevent financial malpractices in Nigerian tertiary institutions, particularly the federal and state universities. The paper uses the desk based, literature-synthesis methodology and reviews the conceptual, theoretical and empirical literature on forensic auditing and financial malpractices in Nigerian tertiary institutions, which is grounded on the Fraud Triangle Theory (Cressey, 1953), Agency Theory (Jensen & Meckling, 1976) and White Collar Crime Theory (Sutherland, 1949), synthesising quantitative evidence from the key empirical studies. The paper's data analysis section gives structured tabulations on the following areas: financial malpractice typology and prevalence in federal and state universities; evidence of effectiveness of forensic audit techniques; comparison of institutional capacities between federal and state universities; and a summary of the hypotheses tested. All three null hypotheses are consistently rejected based on the synthesised evidence which includes the study by Jugu, Mbasiti and Abubakar (2023) on Nigerian federal universities (n = 238; β = 0.54) forensic technology at p< 0.01; the study by the tertiary institutions of Cross River state (2025/2026) with Cronbach's α: 0.89 to 0.93; all three techniques significant at p<0.05 and the study by Dada, Owolabi and Okwu (2024) in South Western Nigerian tertiary institutions. The comparative analysis shows that although state universities have weak access to forensic auditing materials, federal universities have stronger bases for IGR, better internal audit systems, and higher access to TETFund capital, the institutions and the needs for forensic auditing in the state university context are more difficult and more urgent. The paper prescribes different capacities in forensic audit for federal and state universities, compulsory forensic accounting certification for ICAN, inter-agency cooperation between EFCC and ICPC and NUC regulations on forensic audit units in the internal audit directorates of the universities.