Temporal, Socio-Economic and Governance Dynamics in Nigeria's GDP (1950-2020)

Abstract

Nigeria’s economic development has naturally drawn from its rich endowment of natural resources, especially petroleum products that grew astronomically in the 1970s and 1980s but in the process stifled growth of other sectors of the economy. In recent years, quite dramatic changes have been noticeable in expanding macro-level wealth that continues amidst widespread and deepening poverty and hopelessness. From the standpoint of efficient economic management, understanding the underlying causes of these confounding and often contradictory situations is crucial. To achieve this, it is necessary to undertake a wide-sweeping exploration of the broad socio-economic and political environment, particularly in respect to the governance systems, leadership, and economic management approaches most likely to have influenced the past and present trends in GDP growth. Innovative econometric procedures based on ARDL and ARIMA models were employed to analyze conventional macro-economic data from the Penn World Table (PWT) database in combination with dummies calibrated for Nigeria to respresent types of rule, governance systems, agricultural and overall economic policy management systems. Important insights were gained on the possible relationships among these factors and GDP growth on which future policy interventions can be designed.