Corporate governance disclosure: evidence from Nigeria listed companies

the attention on Corporate Governance (CG) is considered demanding as limited research has been done in CG disclosure in emerging countries. Nevertheless, many African countries began to pay more attention to the ideas of corporate governance in the 1980s despite the political system, culture, economic structure, and globalization. Empirical studies have focused on different disclosure requirements to evaluate companies in a specific sector. This paper aims to examine five different sectors in Nigeria listed companies from 2010-2013 to investigate the relationship between corporate governance disclosure, firm age, composition of boards and financial performance in Nigeria listed firms. The aim of this paper is to understand the in-depth insights of the current governance practice in Nigeria by contributing to literature studies and provide suggestions to improve the policy framework that supports corporate governance in Nigeria. This study adopted triangulation in theories which will focus on Agency, Stakeholder and institutional theories. To achieve the research aim, this study used secondary data from companies listed on the Nigerian stock exchange. Data on the Dependent research variable collected for the corporate governance disclosure index that is derived from the revised Securities Exchange Commission SEC (2011) and other independent variables are collected from the companies published annual reports. This study used panel regression technique to determine the influence of corporate governance disclosure practices on firm age, composition of boards and financial performance in Nigeria listed firms. The regression result indicates that the firm age, board composition and Return on Equity are positively related hence are likely to engage in corporate governance disclosure. However, return on Asset does not affect corporate governance disclosure.