The Nigerian Stock Exchange was established in 1960 as the Lagos Stock Exchange. In December 1977 it became The Nigerian Stock Exchange, with branches established in some of the major commercial cities of the country. At present (2009), there are six branches of The Nigerian Stock Exchange. Each branch has a trading floor. The branch in Lagos was opened in 1961; Kaduna, 1978; Port Harcourt, 1980; Kano, 1989; Onitsha, February 1990; and Ibadan August 1990; Abuja, October 1999 and Yola, April 2002. Lagos is the Head Office of The Exchange. An office has just been opened in Abuja.
The Exchange started operations in 1961 with 19 securities listed for trading. Today there are 262 securities listed on The Exchange, made up of 11 Government Stocks, 49 Industrial Loan (Debenture/Preference) Stocks and 194 Equity / Ordinary Shares of Companies, all with a total market capitalization of approximately N287.0 billion, as at August 31, 1999.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Nigeria is the apex regulatory institution of the Nigerian capital market supervised by the Federal Ministry of Finance.

The Commission has evolved over time having started with the establishment of the Capital Issues Committee in 1962 by the government as an essential arm of the Central Bank of Nigeria. This was purely an ad-hoc, non-statutory committee, which later metamorphosed into SEC in 1978, following a comprehensive review of the Nigerian financial system, with the promulgation of SEC Decree No. 71 of 1979. Successive reviews of this earlier enactment led to the introduction of a new legislation, the Investments and Securities Act (ISA) No 45 of 1999.

This legislation vastly enlarged the powers of the Nigerian SEC, while saddling it with the dual responsibilities of: regulating the capital market with a view to protecting the interest of all investors in the market; and developing the capital market in order to enhance its allocative efficiency, and pave the way for a private sector led economy.