GOVERNANCE, CORRUPTION, INSECURITY, INTERNATIONAL IMAGE AND NIGERIA’S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING OR MUCH NOTHING ABOUT ADO?
Yekeen O. Abdul-Maliq
Department of Banking and Finance,
University of Abuja-Nigeria.
Abstract
Corruption is the bane of Nigeria’s development seems to be the mantra under which the Nigerian economy and polity have been managed since independence. The continuing revelations of even more outlandish corruption issues in the twenty-first century Nigeria however suggest that the anti-corruption war has not been and not being won. The bane of Nigeria’s economic development has recently been expanded to include governance and insecurity. Protecting the Nigerian economy and polity from excessive foreign influence/domination and at the same time, attracting enough foreign capital have posed another dilemma hence the addition of international image/perception to the factors. Most previous studies on the roles of these factors in Nigeria’s developmental challenges, however, have been bi-lateral. The objectives of this paper are to determine (1) the extent to which each of the above factors has impeded Nigeria’s economic development, (u) how material the combined effect of these factors is in explaining Nigeria’s economic performance and, (in) to identify other major factors that have influenced Nigeria’s economic performance in the period under study. Based on thirty-two year data (1986 2017), the paper examines five governance, corruption and international image and twelve other variables within Keynesian endogenous growth model. Results show that most of the corruption and governance variables are not in the Pareto bracket but foreign capital, economic openness and diasporas factors are. The paper recommends that (i) anti-corruption fight be pursued under a different, (ii) that more investment friendly policies be enunciated and implemented to help increase employment opportunities and reduce dependency ratios, and (iii) that under the current international order, the eclectic growth theory be embraced.
Keywords: Pareto Brackets, Grab Syndrome, Governance, Corruption, Global Factor-Analysis.