Firms’ Characteristics and Debt Maturity Structure of Listed Oil and Gas Firms in Nigeria

The objective of our paper is to examine the nexus between firms' characteristics and debt maturity structure in Nigeria. The financial statements of all oil and gas listed firms in Nigeria between 2012 and 2023 provided the secondary data used in the study. The study was examined using panel fixed effect data analysis and Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator. The study's findings showed that, at the 5% level of significance, debt maturity structure is positively impacted by liquidity, asset structure, size and profitability. However, debt maturity structure is negatively significantly impacted by non-debt tax shields. The study shows that firms' characteristics have significant impact on debt maturity structure. Therefore, it was recommended that management of oil & gas companies should pursue efficiency in order to minimize the usage of debt in the capital structure option. Unlike previous empirical work in this area, the study addresses potential variable bias. Also it examines the direction of casualty between the firm characteristics and debt structure. This provides a more robust and accurate understanding of the subject matter.