Corporate governance in Nigerian Higher Education: Issues and challenges.

Abstract

Many researches have been conducted in the area of corporate governance. However, few works have been carried out on the compliance of corporate governance principles in relation to government institutions of learning.  The few papers that were found were on universities and not even in the Nigerian context and none on the polytechnics. This study intends to feel the existing gap. It examines issues and challenges relating to corporate governance in Nigerian higher education which comprised of the Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education. There were many crisis in Nigerian higher education attributed to various factors by different authors and researchers, however, corporate governance is a major factor to this unstable structure in Nigerian higher education. Using qualitative method, thirty six principal officers drawn from six different categories of government owned institution with agency theory and stakeholder theory underpinning the theoretical framework. It was found that four factors are responsible for the challenges in achieving effective corporate governance in Nigerian higher education. These factors include funding, political interference, law and leadership.

Keywords: Corporate governance, Compliance, Nigerian higher education