National Security and Wealth Creation: The Nigerian Sustainable Growth Nightmare

Abstract

Insecurity has been one of the many challenges implicated as the biggest developmental and growth obstacle facing Nigeria as a nation. Since the independent in 1960, the country developmental strides have been hampered by one form of insecurity or the other. The country over the decades has experienced high rate of poverty, youth unemployment, widening income disparity, clashes and conflict, and violence among others with over 70% of her population living below poverty line. Security is undoubtedly the pillar upon which  every meaningful development could be achieved and sustained. Lend credence to this assertion, most advanced nations of the world place  high premium on security. Whilst Nigeria is richly blessed with abundant natural resources and human capital, negligence to numerous challenges of insecurity of the environment appears to have created porous security condition that engendered violence and retards growth and development. This paper is designed to empirically establish the nexus between national security and wealth creation in Nigeria. It also estimates the effect of national security on sustainable growth in Nigeria. Noting that insecurity affect growth with time lag, an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) Model is built for the analysis. It is expected that security exacts positive time lag effects on growth, whilst insecurity negates sustainable growth.