Corporate governance involves the codes of practice that have been put in place to ensure that organizations are well managed and controlled. It entails accountability, authority, leadership, stewardship direction and control exercised by organizations. Corporate governance is one of the ideals in performance of public entities in Kenya globally. Corporate governance ensures that the stakeholders’ interests are well taken care of. The study investigated the Effects of corporate governance on performance in public universities in Nakuru County, Kenya. In particular, it established how internal control, accountability and stewardship affect performance in public universities. The Resource dependency and stewardship theories guided the study. The researcher adopted a descriptive research design .The target population comprised of the 166 management and administrative staff working with the public universities in Nakuru County. Stratified random sampling was adopted to draw a sample size of 63 respondents from the study population. A structured questionnaire was employed to collect primary data from the respondents. Data analysis employed both descriptive and inferential statistics. The study found that an internal control does not have significant effect on performance of public universities. However, accountability and stewardship were found to have moderately strong and significant effect on performance of the Public. It was concluded that it is vital to ensure transparency and reliability of information for financial reporting. Accountability was concluded to be important in ensuring performance by providing a framework for managerial and financial accountability.