The claim made by President Adama Barrow over the weekend that the audit reports are opinions has generated a heated debate among Gambians, especially on various social media platforms – with many disputing the claim and others expressing disappointment and concerns over his willingness to fight corruption in the country. 

Barrow made the claim in an exclusive interview with Star TV which was published on the platform’s YouTube channel on Saturday and has so far generated over 5k views as of Monday. 

The interview addressed several issues, including agriculture, the economy and infrastructure. But the most controversial subject that caused public outcry was corruption. The interviewer Malik Jones asked him about the allegations of corruption in his administration and what efforts or plans he is putting up to address it. In response, the president made the following remarks as quoted verbatim.

What exactly Barrow says

Speaking in Wolof, President Barrow says:   

“You know most of these allegations of corruption in my government are emerging from audit reports. And audit reports emerge from opinions. It is not conclusive for us to make decisions. Audit reports can have mistakes and can be biassed. If a claim is made, we must make our internal investigations… We cannot use opinions to give people a death sentence. We must first establish the case first based on the claims made.”

The legality of the audit reports 

The production of audit reports is required by the laws of the Gambia, specifically the 1997 Constitution and the National Audit Office Act 2015. Section 159 (1) establishes the National Audit Office as an act of parliament, and it reads: “There shall be a National Audit Office in the public services of which the Auditor General shall be the head and the other members which shall assist the Auditor General in the performance of the functions conferred on him or her by this Constitution or any Act of the National Assembly.” 

The NAO is headed by the Auditor General. Section 160 of the Constitution tasked the Auditor General to carry out the following mandatory services: “at least once in every year audit and report on the public accounts of The Gambia, the accounts of all offices and authorities of the Government of The Gambia, the accounts of the courts, the accounts of the National Assembly and the accounts of all enterprises; within six months of the end of the immediately preceding financial year to which each of the accounts referred to in paragraph, relates, report to the National Assembly on the accounts and draw attention to any irregularities in the accounts audited and to any other matter which, in his or her opinion, ought to be brought to the notice of the National Assembly.”

How do auditors audit public accounts? 

The Economic Times defines an audit as the examination or inspection of various books of accounts by an auditor followed by physical checking of inventory to make sure that all departments are following a documented system of recording transactions with the objective to ascertain the accuracy of financial statements provided by the organisation. 

The Gambian constitution provides that the ‘Auditor-General and any member of the National Audit Office authorised by him or she shall have the power to call for and inspect all books, records, returns, reports and other documents in the exercise of the functions.

“Wherever discrepancies of a criminal or fraudulent nature are discovered during the audit of accounts by the Auditor-General, he or she shall immediately cause a report of his or her findings to be submitted to the inspector-General of police,” as per section 160 of the Constitution. 

A difference between a fact [evidence-based] and opinion 

It is important to first establish what an opinion and a fact are.  According to Lumen, facts are things that we know to be true based on evidence from observation while opinions are beliefs or views that can’t be proven as they are not based on any evidence. 

Audit reports: Opinion or evidence-based? 

In analysing the president’s claim that audit reports are based on opinion, the following issues are important to take note of. It is true that auditors do have an opinion. However, these are not ordinary opinions as they are based on the assessment they have conducted in their scrutinisation process of the financial statements of the public accounts that they have audited. 

For example, Section 20 of the National Audit Office Act 2015 states that: “The Auditor General shall provide an audit opinion on financial statements of each entity for which he or she has a responsibility to audit within six months of the end of the immediate preceding financial year… The Auditor General shall attach the audit opinion to the financial statements of the audited entity and present them to the national assembly.”

According to Accounting Hub, while audit opinion presents the auditor’s view based on the accuracy or otherwise of the financial statements provided to them by entities they audited, auditors based those opinions on the audit evidence obtained during the course of an audit.

Audit reports are considered evidence in court

The audit opinions are not opinions that are generally made. They are made based on the material evidence they have acquired from public institutions in this case such as financial statements. This allows the audit reports to be considered as one of the best pieces of evidence to be produced before a court of law and it is presented in their original form. While opinions can be flagged as hearsay, facts are not. Hence the audit reports are accepted.