ASSESSING CURRENT PERFORMANCE, ISSUES AND OPPORTUNITIES IN THE NIGERIAN CAPITAL MARKET

Abstract
The Nigeria capital market has not witnessed obvious transformation over the years. The research aimed at Assessing Current Performance, Issues & Opportunities on the Nigeria capital market. An empirical survey based on secondary data & primary data procured from Lagos Stock Exchange, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Securities & Exchange Commission. A total number of one hundred and twenty (120) copies of questionnaire were administered to staff of financial regulatory sectors respectively for which (80) were used for analysis. After cleaning and sorting the copies of the accepted questionnaire they were fed into the statistical package for social science (SPSS). The questionnaire was structured in line with the research objectives, questions and hypothesis of the study. The Pearson product moment correlation coefficient was used to confirm formulated hypotheses. The findings indicate that the rate of capital market performance is low and has not contributed effectively to Nation gross domestic product (GDP). The capital market, stock market which are the major players in the Nigeria economy diminished as shown in Tables. The Nigeria stock exchange (NSE) All share index greatly collapsed. The study concluded that policies like improvement in the institutional quality, enhancement of Nigerian security challenges to make Nigeria an investor-friendly nation, encouragement of the local industries by supporting small and medium enterprises, and enhancement of international trade between Nigeria and other countries will be suggested to Nigerian government as a way to improve stock market performance.