Impact of Crude Oil Exports and Corruption on Economic Growth in Nigeria: Using ARDL Bound Test

This study investigated the impact of crude oil exports and corruption on economic growth in Nigeria. Annual time series data is utilized over the period 1996 to 2015 using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to Cointegration and Error Correction Model, developed by Pesaran, Shin and Smith (2001). The results indicate a long-run relationship between GDP, crude oil export and corruption. Also, the study further reveals an insignificant negative impact between crude oil export and corruption on GDP growth. Moreover, the coefficient of error correction model suggests that the speed of adjustment in the estimated model had the expected level of significance and negative sign. Major findings of this study shows that crude oil export has positive impact on GDP growth in the short run and negative impact in the long run. Also, corruption has negative impact on GDP growth in both short run and the long run. Results portraits that in the short-run oil export has positively impacted on the economic growth despite its effect by corruption which appears to be negatively related to GDP growth and crude oil export. Similarly, in the long-run crude oil export and corruption deter GDP growth, both have negatively impacted on the economic growth because of high level of corruption in the oil and gas sector as the mainstay of the Nigerian economy. The study therefore recommends that government should diversify its economic based of different oil and non-oil sectors in the economy, export promotion strategy of this sectors should be taken seriously by the government in order to effect a positive change in revenue generation. Government should further endeavor to strengthen the effectiveness of other sectors to accelerate economic growth to improve meaningful youth economic inclusion and employment in the other sectors of the economy .