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Abstract
The specific objective is to investigate whether gender diversity of the board of directors and audit committee has any effect on the return on assets of listed firms in the Nigerian stock exchange. This study adopts the expo-facto research design. The population of this study therefore comprised of the entire listed companies on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange broken down into their appropriate industrial sectors/categories. Purposive sampling technique was however adopted to select sixty-six (66) listed firms for a period of 10 years spanning from 2010 – 2019. Panel data were gathered from the contents of the annual account of 66 selected firms across different sectors on the Nigerian stock exchange to cover a period of ten years (2010 -2019). The Ordinary Least Square (OLS) techniques were used for the study. The results from the test proved that in Nigeria, despite suspected cases of relatively low level of compliance with prescribe governance codes, firm performance (as measured by ROA) is jointly and separately affected by measures of gender diversity, board attributes and audit committee characteristics of listed firms. In light of the finding of this study and the conclusion drawn, the recommended that Regulatory bodies must continue to emphasize on the need for an effective audit committee to ensure a good performance.