By Udeh, Anastasia Ifeoma
In the immediate past two decades the financial services industry has experienced fluctuating fortunes leading to high profile cases of corporate failure and consequent near loss of public confidence and hence, the banking reform kick starts in 2004. The industry’s problems in Nigeria are consequences (directly or indirectly) of bad corporate governance. The lack of effective corporate governance in Nigeria has worked to the decrement of shareholders and created a class of stakeholder who has lost interest in the banking system. The study therefore appraised Nigerian banks’ compliance to the CBN code of Corporate Governance as well as its effect on bank performance. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to measure Nigerian bank’s compliance to the CBN code of corporate governance, while the panel data ordinary least square regression to measure the compliance effect on bank’s profitability. Among other codes of corporate governance for board size, audit committee, board diversity, and power separation. Nigerian commercial banks’ compliance to CBN best practice for board size was statistically insignificant. Therefore, commercial banks in Nigeria were up till the date of this study non-compliant with the CBN best practice for board size. The same was discovered for board diversity, audit committee, and power separation as the f-statistics evidenced in analysis of Variance showed a significant variance between the Nigerian commercial banks’ observed practices and the best practice code as dictated by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Nonetheless, Nigerian commercial banks significantly complied with the CBN best practice code for commercial banks’ board composition. This was evidenced in the analysis of variance as the f- calculated was less than the f- critical, signifying very little variance between commercial banks’ observed practices and the CBN best practice code for corporate board composition. It was recommended that Central Bank of Nigeria should strictly monitor Nigerian banks’ compliance to the code of corporate governance, especially board size, audit committee, board diversity, power separation, as a percentage increase in general compliance to the best practice. In conclusion, Compliance to Central Bank of Nigeria code of corporate governance significantly impacted on banks’ profitability in Nigeria. CBN code of corporate governance raises profitability of Nigerian banks by 3.53 percent. The direct relationship between general compliance to CBN code of corporate governance and profit of commercial banks will boost the profitability of the commercial banks.