This study examined the relationship between firm liquidity and the dividend payments of listed companies in Nigeria on one hand, and made a comparative analysis of this relationship between the financial and real sector firms, on the other. The study employed panel least squares regression to analyze the data of 30 listed firms (15 each drawn from the financial and real sectors of the Nigerian economy). Specifically, the study examined the effect of five liquidity and funds flow variables: current ratio (CUR), profit after tax (PAT), earnings per share (EPS), sales/gross earnings (SAL) and debtcapital ratio (DCR) on the dividend payments (DPS) of the firms under study for the period 2008 -2017. Findings from the study show that using the fixed effect model results for the financial sector firms, CUR and PAT have positive and statistically significant effects on DPS while the rest ( EPS, SAL and DCR) have negative and statistically insignificant effects on DPS. However, using the random effect model results for the real sector, the CUR has a negative but statistically insignificant effect on the DPS while PAT and SAL have positive and statistically significant effects on DPS. EPS has a positive but statistically insignificant effect on DPS while DCR has a negative but statistically insignificant effect on the DPS. It is concluded that liquidity has significant effect on dividend payment of both the financial and real sector of the Nigerian economy. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of the effect of liquidity on dividend payment of financial and real sector firms shows that though liquidity affects the dividend policy of both the financial and real sector firms in Nigeria, the effects are not uniform in the two sectors. In the financial sector, liquidity ratio (CUR) has a positive and statistically significant effect on the dividend payments of financial sector firms, while in the real sector, it has a negative and statistically insignificant effect on it. Only the profit after tax has positive and statistically significant effect on dividend payments in both financial and real sector firms. A comparative analysis between the financial and real sector firms show that liquidity in terms of current ratio and profit after tax have positive and significant effects on dividend payments among the financial sector firms while profit after tax and sales have positive and significant effects on real sector firms. The study recommends that in taking dividend decisions, financial firms need to manage their liquidity position well and ensure profitability while real sector firms should focus more on their sales and profit after tax.

This study was carried out to examine how stocks of Nigerian deposit money banks (DMBs) reacted to the covid-19 pandemic from two perspectives: prices and volume traded on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. The effect of the pandemic on DMBs stock prices and traded volume was examined from three methodical areas: general effect, predictive effect and response to the covid-19 shock. Panel data of stock prices, volume of stocks traded of all the 15 listed Nigerian DMBs and monthly covid-19 data from February, 2020 to August, 2021 were analyzed with panel least square (PLS)s, panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) and impulse response function (IRF). These analytical methods were used to examine how covid-19 statistics, namely, number of confirmed positive cases, number of deaths due to the pandemic and number of discharged covid-19 patients affected Nigerian DMB’s stock prices and volume of stocks traded for the period under study.  Results of the PLS revealed that while covid-19 positively affected stock prices of the banks, it negatively affected the volume of their stocks that were traded on the Stock Exchange.  The PVAR results revealed that none of the covid-19 statistics examined exert long run predictive effect on stock price of Nigerian DMBs during the period, but the number of discharged patients and significantly had predictive affect volume of stocks traded. Both stock prices and volume traded responded swiftly to the shock from number of covid-19 confirmed cases and mildly to the fatalities and number of discharged patients. We conclude that, overall, the covid-19 pandemic significantly affected Nigerian DMB’s stock prices and volume traded and recommend that both banks and the NSE develop pandemic management strategies and invest more on technology driven stock trading facilities that will reduce the conventional brick-and-mortar trading during lockdowns.