Abstract
The study examine the impact of audit independence on the accountability of ministries in Zamfara
State public sector spanning the period 2017-2023. The study uses Audit fees and audit tenure as
proxies for audit independence as explanatory variables while financial reporting quality is proxy
for accountability as the dependent variable while fourteen (14) ministries that were used as the
sample size. This study conducted pre-regression analyses, including descriptive statistics,
correlation analysis, and regression analysis. The correlation results indicates that accountability
(ACCT) exhibits a strong positive correlation with, audit tenure (AUDT) at coefficient value of
0.3821042 indicating that higher accountability tends to be associated with higher audit tenure
(AUDT). But audit fee (AUDF) has a weak negative correlation with accountability (ACCT). The
regression result revealed a significant influence of audit fees and audit tenure on accountability
as indicates by their respective probability values. The findings also show that audit fee and audit
tenure have positive relations with accountability in Zamfara State public sector. Based on the
findings, the study recommends that the state government should implement competitive bidding
processes for audit services to ensure fair and reasonable audit fees and introduce a transparent
fee structure in the state to moderate excessive fees that may compromise auditor independence