Mandatory Environmental Disclosures by Companies Complying With IAS/IFRS: A Case of Nigeria (Published)
The Report of the Vision 2020 Committee set up to provide a roadmap that will propel Nigeria among the top 20 world economies by 2020 acknowledged that the country is faced with many environmental problems such as the continuous exploitation of marginal lands, drought and desertification in the north, severe gully erosion in eastern and northern states, uncontrolled logging with inherent problems of the destruction of bio-diversity, inappropriate agricultural practices, destruction of watershed, destruction of vast agricultural lands, creation of burrow pits due to bad mining practices and road works, oil pollution from spillage and gas flaring, urban decay and squatter settlements, industrial pollution and municipal waste generation among other things. In view of the above, this paper examines mandatory disclosure of environmental accounting by companies complying with IFRS/IAS in Nigeria. Contents analysis research design was adopted by reviewing the available literature in the field of this study. It was discovered that Nigeria was facing with challenges of inaccurate data, incompetent manpower, and lack of transparency among companies. Despite these shortcomings Mandatory reporting present several advantages such as the creation of standardized and comparable measures that enable benchmarking and best practices among companies complying with IFRS/IAS in Nigeria. It was concluded that aside from complying with IFRS/IAS, Incentives and enforcement was also identified as a factor for full convergence and comparability among companies.
Keywords: Companies, IAS, IFRS, Nigeria, environmental disclosures