Corporate Governance and Performance of Non-Financial Firms in Nigeria

Abstract

The study examined corporate governance and the performance of non-financial firms in Nigeria within the canonical correlation analytical framework. The study validated the relationship between set of corporate governance variables and set of firm’s performance variables using relevant data extracted from the firm’s published annual financial statements and various issues of the Nigerian stock exchange fact books spanning 2011-2018. The results from this study provided evidence to prove the existence of a statistically significant association between sets of corporate governance and sets of firm’s performance variables using the Wilks’ Lambda, Pillai’s trace and Lawley-Hotelling trace at the 5 percent significance level and Roy’s Largest root at the 1 percent significance level. The implication of this study is that corporate governance is highly instrumental in improving the performance of non-financial firms in Nigeria. In other words, an improvement in corporate governance indices will inevitably boost the profitability of non-financial firms in Nigeria.