Access to long-term debt has been a persistent problem facing Nigerian nonfinancial listed firms. The existing literature suggests that CEO tenure has a bearing on the ability of firms to secure a considerable amount of borrowings to finance their investment opportunities. However, Nigeria's corporate governance framework does not contain a specific recommendation on the CEO tenure, which in turn results in an unstable tenure of CEOs in the Nigerian corporate environment. Thus, this paper examines how CEO tenure influences the financing pattern of the companies operating in the country. The study analysed the balanced panel data set of 63 Nigerian listed firms for seven years (2012-2018) using the two-step system GMM. In particular, the research found that CEO tenure is significantly and positively associated with the firms' leverage ratio. This evidence underscores the relevance of the CEO tenure on the borrowing decisions of the Nigerian non-financial listed firms. The findings of this research have some policy implications on the firms' capital structure choices. First of all, the Nigerian firms should attach more value to the longer serving CEOs, because longer tenure enhances CEOs' strategic decisions, including the choice of optimum leverage. Also, regulatory authorities in Nigeria should specify the number of years CEOs should serve. By doing so, CEOs will have a stable term in office and thereby empowering them in collaboration with their board members to design an effective debt policy to boost the firms' value.

The effect of board diversity on organisational performance has continued to be given attention by policymakers, non-governmental agencies, and academic communities. It has been established that boardroom diversity enhances the corporate boards’ monitoring capacity and mitigates the agency costs, which positively influences the firms’ performance. Despite the advantages of constituting diverse boards, the corporate governance framework guiding the operations of such firms does not contain any specific requirement on board diversity. Hence, empirical studies need to stress more on the relevance of boardroom diversity to firms’ value in the Nigerian context. Therefore, this paper examines the effect of board diversity on financial performance of the Nigerian listed firms. The study utilised the balanced panel data of 70 firms for a period of 8 years (2012 to 2019) using a two-step system generalised method of moments (GMM) framework. This study indicates a positive and significant relationship of board gender diversity (BGD) and Foreign directors (FD), with financial performance. However, the effect of CEO financial expertise on the firms’ return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), and return on sales (ROS) appear positive but insignificant. Consequently, the Nigerian listed firms should attach more value to constitute a smaller board size with a considerable number of female and foreign directors to maximise their performance.