Finance and Compliance Officer at Oxfam Nigeria

Oxfam is a confederation of 17 AffilIates committed to creating a just world without poverty. In Nigeria Oxfam works in the areas of Economic Justice/Sustainable Livelihoods, Humanitarian programming to save lives, Advancing Gender Justice and Good governance, adopting a rights based approach.

Christian Rural and Urban Development Association of Nigeria (CRUDAN) is a Christian, not-for- profit, Non-Governmental Organization, working to ensure that Nigerian communities experience sustained food security, improved household nutrition, economic justice, natural resources management. disaster risks reduction, conflict transformation and humanitarian aid without bias to faith, gender or ethnicity.

Development Exchange Centre (DEC) is a non-government, not-for profit organization with a mandate to support rural and urban women to improve living conditions. This is pursued through the provision of social and micro finance services for socio-economic empowerment.

Oxfam, CRUDAN and DEC seek to employ qualified candidate to fill the position below for the anticipated four year EU-funded pro resilience action (PRO-ACT) aiming at building food security and resilience in Northern Nigeria:

Job Title: Finance and Compliance Officer

Location: Abuja
Job Family: Finance
Level: D1
Job Type: Fixed Contract
Duration: 4 years
Reporting to: Business Support Manager (BSM).

Oxfam Purpose
To work with others to find lasting solutions to poverty and suffering.

Team Purpose
To provide a proactive, efficient and effective financial management service to Oxfam’s Programme in Nigeria and West Africaas maybe required.

Job Purpose

• To be responsible for the provision of efficient and effective accounting services to Nigeria through technical support to finance and non finance in the region, capacity building and quality control on financial information to internal and external stakeholders.
• The position will also provide a proactive, efficient and effective donor and financial compliance & risk management service to Oxfam’s Programme in Nigeria

Dimensions

• Provide Financial Management Support to Country Programmes and Partners for effect and efficient financial management
• Support enforcement of local laws and OGB corporate standards as they affect Finance for judicious accounting, reporting and total compliance to donor’s guidelines, policies and contractual conditions
• Train Finance staff on OGB and donors Finance procedures/tools with post training implementation follow ups, refreshers, hands on coaching/mentoring and flagging and timely resolving non compliance challenges via various tracking methods including ‘Transactions Compliance Testing’ (TCT)
• Handle queries and promptly resolve queries on financial and contractual compliance matters from internal and external stakeholders from time to time including daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly as may be most appropriate
• Prepare monthly detailed reports in donor’s formats, Interpret Financial Information for departmental and senior managers informed decision making and required actions arising from Budget and Actual monitoring meeting.
• Supervise day to day transaction processing (directly or indirectly) – problem solving at national office, state offices and ensuring partners’ finance staff are effectively documenting, recording systemically using the required tools and framework
• Contributes to effective project expenditure monitoring including management of restricted funds, may include unrestricted of the Nigeria country office as maybe assigned to by the management
• Develop risk profile with mitigation set of defined solutions for regular monitoring, updating and ensuring implementation of required ways of working. Also, contribute to annual/other assessments of partners and reviews in the country team including the Region when required.
• Lead and support Internal and External audits in the country office and ensuring that audit findings and recommendations are reviewed regularly for implementation as much as possible providing reasons if any recommendation is not implementable.
• Contribute to management to the overall business support unit’s objectives and output deliverables in a qualitative manner.
• Staff performance objectives planning, development and periodic staff performance monitoring, evaluation and performance development plans development for enhancing skills and performance
• Participate in budget development, revision from time to time

Key Responsibilities
National, States and partners offices Duties:

• Ensure quality of financial accounts is maintained.
• Ensure compliance with corporate deadlines for financial account reporting
• Manage and monitor the regular (daily/monthly) reconciliation of time sheets, complete supporting documentation for each transaction, ensuring that all discrepancies are promptly cleared by partners and staff and flagging concerns through the management line when discrepancies are left unresolved for more than a month.
• Ensure accurate EOC/pension provisions Account, reviewed monthly and reconciled with PeopleSoft.
• Ensure accurate project acquired Fixed Asset Register (FAR) is maintained in line with donor requirements. Participate in or ensure quarterly physical asset verification and reconciliation to PeopleSoft data.
• Ensure financial procedures in the country office is consistent with corporate and donor finance standard and where they do not, take remedial action and/or recommend exception procedures to management for review and sign off.
• In coordination with BSM, develop audit term of reference, supervise internal and external audits to ensure timely and effective audits from time to time.
• Monitor Cash flows to ensure appropriate amounts of cash are being maintained for unimpeded program delivery.
• Review transactions listing (partners & Oxfam) for accuracy, adequacy, existence and relevance to budget lines, conditions and coding (PeopleSoft and auxiliary C code) are consistently used and cross reference on all documents, and accurately transcribed into PeopleSoft template before posting into the system.
• Ensure that field office financial documents are scanned, for the conduct monthly TCT and feedback on compliance to partners, BSM, Project Managers. Monitor non compliance for appropriate actions for prompt resolution of findings before the next TCT.
• Ensure that donor detailed budget is in PeopleSoft, partners grants are timely released, accounted for and monthly update budget and expenditure in PeopleSoft in accordance with Oxfam Donor Contract Management (DCM) using codes 70000, 71000 & 72000.
• Produce relevant monthly management financial information for various end users staff to support in management decision making.
• Support in the preparation and monitoring of consolidated donor Budgets when required
• Participate in inception meetings, monitoring visits and roll out of various financial tools when required. Ensure that agreed tools are used.
• To ensure effective partner financial management across the country programme including partner capacity building.
• Ensure effective restricted contract management including quality check of donor reports and capacity building of staff on the same.
• To provide support to Country Programme staff in the annual budgeting process.
• Train staff and support staff in the use of PeopleSoft and monitor the agreement amongst CRIMSON, OPAL and PeopleSoft.
• Preparation of statutory financial accounts for the country office (usually end of the year) i.e. Income statement and Balance Sheet
• Perform other duties as assigned.
• Act as cover in absence of BSM.

Skills, Requirements and Competence

• Bachelor's/HND degree in Accounting
• At least five  (5) year's experience in finance, ideally with at least two years working in a supervisory position.
• Proven leadership skills in motivating multi cultural and multi sectoral teams.
• Ability to develop and produce critical finance management tools to ensure excellent financial services to deliver the programme.
• Proven experience of managing funds raised from institutional donors such as EU, ECHO, OFDA, DFID, etc
• Experience of managing donor schedules and production of donor reports.
• Proven knowledge and experience of computerised systems, preferably with accounting packages as well as advanced Excel skills.
• Excellent interpersonal skills; ability to work on own and within various teams.
• Excellent communication skills, fluency in verbal and written English/French.
• Ability to delegate, coach and develop staff.
• Ability to manage competing tasks; ability to prioritise and produce high level output consistently.
• Knowledge of local laws related to finance will be an advantage.
• Critical awareness of gender equity principles and commitment and interest to developing these within Oxfam.
• Able to travel to field offices on a regularly basis
• Fluency in verbal and written English

Staff reporting to this post:

• Two or more staff

Budget Responsibility:

• None but strategic monitoring and probity requirement

Remuneration
Remuneration is Based on the National Salary Scale of Nigeria Country Office

Application Closing Date
6th July, 2015.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should send application letter and curriculum vitae in English to: [email protected]

For enquiries contact: [email protected] for Oxfam, [email protected] , for DEC-Bauchi and [email protected] for CRUDAN.

Note: Applications sent to the enquiry email will be disqualified.