WHAT GOES WRONG WITH NIGERIA’S GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE AS A TOOL FOR PROMOTING GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT?
WHAT GOES WRONG WITH NIGERIA’S GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE AS A TOOL FOR PROMOTING GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT?
Keywords:
Government expenditure, efficiency, corruption, budget delay, economic growth, development, NigeriaAbstract
Government expenditure has been identified as a powerful tool in pushing nations toward achieving
economic growth. A growing public investment tends to engineer a country toward industrial
advancement in all facets of economic activities. Thus, underdevelopment is mostly assumed
especially among the pro-Keynesians to be centred on inadequate quality public investment.
However, it becomes an economic paradox and a thing of concern that a country with abundance of
human, material and natural resources like Nigeria still lags behind in turning its huge and
growing public expenditure allocations to promote pro-poor and inclusive growth. This paper
attempts to trace the government expenditure profile of Nigeria in order to understand and find the
missing links as to why government expenditure has not yielded the theorized result through
comparative analysis of some selected countries. The findings of this study indicate that the efficacy
of government expenditure in Nigeria is deterred by budget delay, misplaced priority, corruption
and mismanagement of resources. The study concludes that larger government expenditure cannot
guarantee positive development unless if the expenditure is done in quality, cost effective and
meaningful manner. Therefore, this study recommends a deliberate effort by the government to
ensure efficient and effective investment of resources in infrastructure as well as the equitable
distribution of benefits and maintenance of productivity of the natural assets in the country.