Political stewardship accounting for good governance in Ekiti state, Nigeria

Abstract

This paper aimed at analyzing the importance of stewardship accounting in government ministries in
Ekiti State and the causes of mismanagement in government-sector finance. The population comprised
four thousand principal officers in the sixteen local governments of Ekiti State of Nigeria out of which
four hundred were stratifiedly selected from each local government. The data were gathered through
questionnaires while frequency counts, percentage scores and factor analysis were used to analyze the
data. The findings showed that stewardship accounting promotes good management of public funds,
increases accountability and probity in the public sector and discourages embezzlement of public
funds and promotes economics growth. It was therefore recommended that the government should
make sure that stewardship accounting should be set up and strictly implemented for better
reconstruction of good governance so as to guide against mal-administration of the public funds by
public officers; and the ascertainment of proprietary of transactions and their conformity with
established rules.