CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE OF NIGERIAN BANKS: (A CASE STUDY OF FIRST BANK PLC)

Corporate governance has been an issue of global concern long before now. However, it came to limelight in the 1980s as a result of the fallout of the Cadbury report in the United Kingdom, which concentrated on the financial aspects of corporate governance. Immediately followed suits, the issue of corporate governance transmitted across all developed and developing countries (Akpan & Rima, 2012). Proper governance of companies is now as crucial to the world economy as the proper governance of countries and will converge in associated issues of competitiveness, corporate citizenship, social and environmental responsibility. The governance of banks becomes even more prominent considering their role in financial intermediation in developing economies. Commercial banks are the main providers of funds to enterprise and where there is thin or absence of good capital market, their failure becomes the failure of system. Simpson (2015) notes that the impact of the failure of the banking system can have immense cost, as it has been repeatedly been seen that bank failure cost developing countries up to 15% of their GDP and losses that outweighs aids received. The major challenge of world’s economy today is not in the area of manufacturing modern equipments that will help fight government rebellions or any such crises that may occur in the economy.