National Insecurity and Economic Growth in Nigeria

Abstract

Nigeria is one of the relatively secured nations in West African sub-region. In 
recent times, this endowed nation suddenly metamorphosed into abode of 
serial bombing, hostage taking, armed robbery, cold-blooded killings and 
ethno-religious conflicts traceable to militant groups with conflicting 
ideological, political and religious agenda. The resultant loss of lives, rising 
budgetary spending for security and destruction of valuable government 
facilities portend devastating consequences for sustainable economic 
development in the country. This study examined the link between national 
security and economic growth in Nigeria. The researcher adopted 
econometric method, which entailed extraction of secondary data from the 
publications of Central Bank of Nigeria, National Bureau of Statistics and 
other reliable reports on the subject spanning between 1985 and 2015. The generated data were carefully analysed using Ordinary least square 
multiple regression and inferential statistics on the basis of which farreaching conclusions were drawn. The research findings indicated that 
Nigeria‘s expenditure on national security is rising faster than spending on 
education and other critical sectors and that capital, labour and government 
expenditure on security are positively related to GDP while government 
expenditure on education is inversely related to GDP. This unpleasant 
finding has negative effect on sustainable economic development in Nigeria. 
The paper recommended that priority attention should be placed on good 
governance with a robust institutional framework that ensures prudent and 
effective management of resources to better thelot of its citizenry while the 
government should build strong viable institutions that can proactively 
respond to the challenges of security.