Desperation for political offices in Nigeria: A forensic accounting recipe

Nigeria, which is a developing country, runs the most expensive legislature in the world. Its National Assembly is the world’s biggest democracy cost centre. The current emolument structure of the political office holders in Nigeria has since implementationthrown up hues and cries in the polity because the emoluments, when compared with the salary structure of federal or state civil servants, shows a disparity which gives an insight into the desperation for political offices in the country. This research employs the secondary data approach to explore the implications and concerns this phenomenon portends for good governance, transparency, equity, and sustainable development. The study finds that the bias emolument, which shows a 150 percent increase over year 2000 recommendations, taunts Nigeria with dangerous socio-economic consequences. It presents the emerging discipline of forensic accounting which is the application of accounting, auditing and investigative techniques to legal issues as the way out of this leadership quagmire by recommending a strong political resolve towards the promotion of forensic accounting techniques to solving corruption and development related problems