COVID-19 EMERGENCE AND IT IMPACTS ON THE NIGERIAN BANKS’ SOUNDNESS

Abstract

The paper investigated the impacts of Covid-19 Emergence on Nigerian banks’ soundness. The regressor is Covid-19Emergence measured by covid-19 aggregate confirmed cases (CACC), covid-19 aggregate newly confirmed cases(CANC), covid-19 aggregate confirmed death cases (CADC) and covid-19 aggregate newly confirmed death cases(CAND) while the regressand is Nigerian banks’ soundness measured by Nigeria banks’ capital base (CAR). The ex-post facto research design was adopted. Secondary data were collected from the Nigerian Center for Disease andControl (NCDC) report, World Health Organization (WHO) report, and the Quarterly report of the Nigerian StockExchange (2020-2021). Generalize Autoregressive Heteroskedasticity model was adopted using Econometric Views(E-views) 9.0. The results revealed that; CACC exerted positive significant impacts on the Nigerian banks’ CAR whileCANC have positive insignificant impacts on the Nigerian banks’ CAR. Again, CADC have adverse significant impactson the Nigerian banks’ CAR. However, CAND exerted negative minimal impacts on the Nigerian banks’ CAR. Hence,the paper concludes that though the emergence of Covid-19 pandemic in human history still did not make theNigerian banks to be unsound even when the CADC had high adverse impacts on the Nigerian banks’ CAR. Thisstudy therefore advocates that the apex bank must endeavour that banks are highly capitalized so as to hedgeagainst unplanned economic downturns.