HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES FOR ENHANCING ECONOMIC GROWTH IN NIGERIA

This study examined the impact of human capital development and economic growth in Nigeria using time series spanning from 1986 to 2021 which were sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Statistical Bulletin and from the Statistical and Nigeria Education Management Information System, Educational planning, Research and Development office of the Federal Ministry of Education, Abuja. It was set out to explore the relationship between human capital indicators (primary school enrolment, government expenditure on education and government expenditure on health) and economic growth (gross domestic product). The study employed Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to Co-integration analysis to estimate the relationship among the variables used in the study. The study established longrun co-integration among the variables. The findings from the study revealed that there is strong positive long-run relationship among primary school enrolment, government expenditure on education, government expenditure on health and economic growth though not statistically significant while only government expenditure on education and economic growth is statistically significant. In line with the findings, the study recommended that government and all stakeholders should make conscious effort to curb the menace of increasing out of school children which is regarded as “a time bomb” in order to increase primary school enrolment in Nigeria. Government should also improve her expenditure on education in providing educational infrastructure, training and retraining of teachers at all levels in the country so as to sustain long-run economic growth. Furthermore, effort should be made towards increasing budgetary allocation to health sector for continuous growth sustainability.