Forensic Accounting Education: An Exploration of Level of Awareness in Developing Economies - Nigeria as a Case Study

Although there is a growing demand for fraud and forensic accounting globally, much of its advancements and adoption in the accounting curriculum in the universities are taking in the developed economies. Equally, empirical studies tend to be set mostly in the developed economies with little representation of the situation in the developing economies. Furthermore, existing empirical studies have focused exclusively on the views of academics and practitioners, in accessing the demand for forensic accounting. In this study we present fresh and distinctive evidence on the awareness of forensic accounting among accounting undergraduates in a developing economic setting, using Nigeria as a case study. We found that there is a very low level of awareness on forensic accounting among undergraduate students. We contend that adoption of forensic accounting into the universities accounting curriculum has a huge potential to enhance students skills and competencies and could be use as a veritable resources from which fraud could be mitigated. Our study has important policy implications.