ABSTRACT

Fraud has become a devastating crime having multifarious means which human ingenuity device to get an advantage over another by false representation. It has been Nigeria‘s biggest single challenge especially in public sectors. This research study examined financial control in public sector as a measure for preventing fraud with careful examination of existing literature. Four hundred questionnaire were sampled among the civil servants and public workers using survey design. The demographic variables were carried out using descriptive analysis and linear regression model to test the hypothesis. The result revealed that financial control influence prevention and detection of public fraud; most importantly, the use of BVN and TSA (mean score = 2.95) makes the prevention and detection of fraud effective. There was influence of financial control on Nigeria public sector; most importantly, it increases the influx of foreign trade (mean score = 3.01). The Influence of Management integrity on fraud in Nigerian public sector was queried by the respondents that the integrity of administrative personnel in government may not curb public fraud (mean score = 2.29). Likewise, the respondents queried human error impact on financial control and fraud. Most importantly, poverty and financial pressure, and non-total compliance to financial control(mean score = 2.21) were not expected to influence human error in financial control. The influence of management policies on Nigeria public fraud in Nigerian public sector were also queried. However, correlation test showed very strong positive significant correlation between all the variables and the Financial Control (P<0.01). The coefficient of determination R² revealed that 98% of all the systematic variations in the dependent variable were accounted by the independent variables. The adjusted coefficient of determinant R² indicated that over 98% of the systematic variations in dependent variable are explained. The F-Stat was at a value of 5963.0 with P-value less than 0.001. It was also observed that FPDM, RFC, MI, HE and MP stood at positive (significant), t-value of 6.301, 4.487, 2.096, 4.398 and 6.649 respectively. However, the beta value of the unstandardized coefficient showed that Human error (HE) was most determining factor (2.00) than Management policies (MP); 1.101, than Management Integrity (MI); 0.756, than RFC; 0.419 and FPDM which was the least coefficient (0.593). More duties are bound on both government and management of public funds to ensure transparency and a working system that is free and fair to all while regular forensic auditing must be employed to curb public fraud.