Financial scandals around the world are blamed on widespread alteration in accounting earnings by managers. Board characteristics are expected to curtail the opportunistic behaviors of management. Hence, the study investigates the effect of Board characteristics on earnings management of listed oil and gas firms in Nigeria. Board characteristics variables used were gender diversity, board nationality, board size, board composition and board meetings, while earnings management was measured using Yoon, Kim and Woodruff (2012) model. The population comprise of nine listed Oil and Gas firms, while eight were used as sample, due to non-availability of data for one of the firms. Secondary source of data was employed and data were extracted from the financial statements of the firms covering the period 2009-2016.Panel least square regression and Stata 13 were used as techniqueand statistical package, respectively for data analysis.The findings revealed that, gender diversity, Board nationality and Board size have negative and significant effect on earnings management of firms, while Board composition and board meetingsalso havenegative but insignificant effect on earnings management. From the findings, the study recommended amongst others that, the percentage of non-executive director to total number of directors and the number of meetings held by directors in a year should be improved upon as this is expected to constrain managers from unethical behaviors