ABSTRACT
Continuous and several persistent crises caused mainly by the political funding of the board of many firms, the discovering of doubtful financial transactions and the multiplication of fraud cases have had a significant impact on the implementation of audit committee and its characteristics. Due to the loss of confidence in the quality of accounting information and auditing, several countries have an established code of governance or codes of best practices. This study therefore examines the effect of audit committee characteristics on firm’s financial performance through formulation of hypothesis stating that: audit committee independence does not affect firm’s financial performance; no significant relationship between audit committee meeting and firm’s financial performance and; the impact of audit committee expertise on firm’s financial performance is not significant. The study adopted Ex-post facto research design. Having reviewed the extant literature on audit committee characteristics and firm’s financial performance, the study was carried out using secondary data collected from the firm’s Annual reports. The population of this study constitute all listed food and beverages companies in Nigeria Exchange Group (NEG) which comprise of twenty-one (21) firms as at 31st December 2022. From all twenty-one (21) companies listed on the Nigeria Exchange Group (NEG), a sample of fourteen (14) firms was purposively selected based on the availability of their annual reports for a period of 2015 – 2022.. This study performed analysis by presentation and the analysis of data collected and test of research hypothesis. Descriptive statistics such as mean distribution, standard deviation. Inferential statistics such as ordinary least square regression and correlation analysis was conducted or carried out. From analyses, it was found that proxies of audit committee characteristics used in this study, such as audit committee independence and audit committee expertise exhibit positive but insignificant relationship with firm performance (EPS) of listed companies on the Nigeria Exchange Group (NEG), while audit committee meeting exhibit positive and significant relationship with EPS of listed companies on the Nigeria Exchange Group (NEG). Even though audit committee meeting has a positive and significant effect on firms’ performance. This study concluded that audit committee characteristics has no significant effect on firm’s financial performance in Nigeria. This study therefore recommended that firm should increase the number of Audit Committee meetings, so as to ensure that the committee has enough time to make decisions that are efficient and effective in the decision-making processes of the firm.

Keywords: Audit, Audit Meeting, Audit Committee, Audit Expertise, Audit Independence, Firms Performance.