Corporate Governance in a Third World Country with Particular Reference to Nigeria

The paper discusses the issue of power relations and sharing as the basis for instituting a corporate governance procedure. It argues that the peculiar and unstructured nature of the developing economies makes the running of many existing limited liability companies remarkably different from the governance processes of modern Plc and multinational corporations which are controlled (at least in principle) by the owners through shareholder democracy enshrined in the Annual General Meetings. The need for an understanding of the concepts, processes and problems of corporate governance both from the perspective of those who direct, those concerned with returns and accountability, and those concerned with corporate regulation encouraged the author to provide a menu of hypotheses of corporate governance and its relevance to Nigerian corporate bodies. The paper then zeroes in to discuss corporate governance in the banking industry as well as the problems and consequences of the quality of such a governance. In section four of the paper, a crystal eye‐ball and prognostic view was taken of corporate governance in the Nigerian banks in the twenty first century. The paper concludes by providing the recipes that would ensure good corporate governance in the private sector, particularly in Nigerian banks, in the short and long‐run.