CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Business performance has increased over several years in the world and this performance is mainly measured in the terms of profitability. Businesses contain transactions which generate information for better analysis of business performance and forensic accounting is a delivery system for accounting. Banking industry are seen as a driving force for the promotion of large part of the economy (Khan and Jawaid, 2004) and they contribute immensely to the economic growth and development of any country.
With an upsurge in financial accounting fraud in the current economic scenario experienced, prevention and detection of fraud has become an emerging topic of great importance for academic, research and industries. In this age of high technology, fraud investigators can no longer be satisfied with just auditing or accounting skills, these investigators should be trained as forensic accountants and this training should include an extensive knowledge of accounting information systems (Bressler, 2006; Manning, 2005; Ramaswamy, 2005).
The failure of internal auditing system of the organization in identifying the accounting frauds has led to use of specialized procedures to detect financial fraud, collective known as forensic accounting (Kranacher and Stern 2004).
The incidence of bankruptcy, fraud and solvency in major financial institution in Nigeria especially those quoted on the Nigeria Stock Exchange in recent time poses a threat accounting profession because of its perennial nature.
This has resulted to unending questions as to whether forensic accounting actually play any significant role towards the attainment of accountability, transparency, ,prevention of insolvency and fraud, and increase in profit making ability of quoted banks especially that which is currently happening in our major or key financial institution and other corporate organizations in the recent case of Polaris Bank
