This paper reviews the historical background of corporate governance and emerging issues in the development and practice of corporate governance in Nigerian and Ghana firms. The paper examines the role of institutional bodies on corporate governance of listed firms, regulatory and enforcement, and institutional bodies of corporate governance in Nigeria and Ghana. Other issues also examined include role and responsibilities of corporate board and external factors that affect corporate governance such as politics, corruption, economic, and ownership structure of listed firms. We find that institutional shareholders are more active in Nigeria than Ghana, also shareholders association in Ghana are not active compared with that of Nigeria. In addition, Nigeria have a stronger institutional framework than Ghana, this really provide an evidence to show that enforcement of corporate governance practices in Nigeria seem to be better than Ghana. Generally, we find that corruption and bribery, politics, economic and ownership structure influence effective corporate governance practice in each country