Corporate Governance Regulatory Framework in Nigeria: The Offerings and Challenges

Corporate governance is only recently emerging as a concept and attracting serious public commentaries and policy academic discourse in Nigeria, following the failed bank syndrome of the 1980s. The corporate failures of recent times in both developed and developing countries and the world economic crises of 2008 gave further impetus to the development of corporate governance codes, to regulate corporate behaviour and to ensure responsibility, integrity, transparency and accountability in the management and control of companies to maximize stakeholders’ benefits. Nigeria has a fair share of corporate governance crises prompting her continuing efforts to develop corporate governance codes to regulate and instill responsible behaviour in industry operators. The paper seeks to present a critical analysis of the corporate governance regulatory framework in Nigeria and examine the offerings of the industry-specific codes of corporate governance. It further identifies the challenges arising from the multiplicity of corporate governance codes and suggests the way forward. The study adopts the methodology of documentary and historical analysis of the relevant literature. Several concerns have been raised about corporate failures in Nigeria and these have attracted a plethora of public commentaries and academic discourse. The research finds that the multiplicity of corporate governance codes induces conflict of interpretation in the system; regulatory mechanisms to enforce good corporate governance are weak and inefficient; and the voluntary nature of the industry-specific codes affected compliance. Based on these findings, the paper recommends, among others, the strengthening of the enforcement mechanisms of the regulatory institutions, developing more effective mechanisms for monitoring compliance, making the codes mandatory and the development of a National Code of Corporate Governance to cover all industries and sectors of the economy.