The Role of Solid Mineral Export in The Development of The Nigerian Economy: An Empirical Analysis

Nigeria is endowed with abundant solid mineral resources that have the potential to drive its economic diversification efforts. However, the level of exploitation of these solid mineral resources is quite minimal relative to the extent of deposits found across the country. This study therefore examined the contribution of solid mineral export to the development of the Nigerian economy. Specifically, the study investigated the impact of solid mineral export and exchange rate on economic development in Nigeria. Economic development is proxied by the misery index while exchange rate was introduced as a control variable. To conduct the study, several econometric techniques including the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) unit root test, Johansen cointegration test, error correction mechanism (ECM) and Granger causality test were used to analyze annual time series data for the period 1986 to 2022. The estimated regression result revealed that solid mineral export has insignificant negative impact on misery index while exchange rate has significant positive impact on misery index. It is therefore concluded that solid mineral export makes insignificant positive contribution to the development of the Nigerian economy. Among other things, it is recommended that the necessary infrastructural facilities needed to improve the performance of the solid mineral sector should be adequately provided.