NONPERFORMING LOANS PORTFOLIO AND ITS EFFECT ON BANK PROFITABILITY IN NIGERIA

Huge nonperforming loans portfolio erodes the ability of banks to make profits. In the 1990s and beyond many Nigerian banks became weak and highly unprofitable due to excessive nonperforming loans portfolio accumulated by bank promoters and management that led to their demise. Insider dealing was the major cause of large nonperforming loan portfolio in Nigeria, involving over-extension of loans to promoters, directors and significant others that became bad and irrecoverable. To clean up the mess in the banking sector and return the banks to the paths of sound management and profitability, the CBN had to inject about N700bn in a bailout exercise while purging the system of bad and irresponsible management teams. The exploratory research design was adopted. Data generated were organized and coded before they were classified. To achieve the objective of the study data analyses were done through descriptive and regression analyses using the statistical package for the social sciences for the regression. With the regression result of Y = 78.353 - 4.04x it was found that nonperforming loans portfolio has negative effect on bank profitability.