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.