National Insecurity and Economic Growth in Nigeria

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.