The audit committee of every Company was established with defined responsibilities of monitoring and supervising financial reporting, internal control system, internal and external audit functions among others to avoid the fraudulent and unethical practice. Despite the establishment of an audit committee, the companies’ continuous experience collapsing due to fraudulent and unethical behaviour. The collapsing of the companies was attributed to many factors, such as weak audit members, fraudulent and unethical on the appointment of audit committee members and external auditors, lack of diversity in the audit committee appointment among others. This study examines audit committee characteristics and audit fees of listed consumer goods companies in Nigeria. 15 companies were selected out of 26 listed consumer goods companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange as at 31st December 2018 using secondary data through the published audited financial statements. Ordinary least square (OLS) regression analysis was employed to analyze the data. The result reveals that only four variables (audit committee size, audit committee meeting, audit committee diversity, and audit committee share ownership) have a positive significant association with audit fees. The study recommends that audit committee size should be increase to the minimum of 5 and maximum of 7 members, audit committee meeting should be increased to the minimum of 4 and maximum of 6 meetings, audit committee diversity (women directors) should be increase to the maximum of 3 members, and audit committee share ownership should be increase to the minimum of 2 and maximum of 3 members for all consumer goods companies operating in Nigeria.
Keywords: Audit Fees, audit committee and corporate governance
