Abstract:

The issue of security is presently a critical challenge for the Nigeria State: biggest democracy in Africa as reports of killings are plastered on a daily basis on both print and social media. This is unpalatable for a developing country like Nigeria that has its eyes set on improving the lot of its citizens and becoming a force to reckon with in the global economy. It is on this backdrop that this study set sail to examine the association between national defence expenditure and economic development in Nigeria. The study adopted Ex-post facto research design as the variables- Misery Index, CDEX and RDEX: cannot be manipulated as they are annual time series data sourced from the World Development Indicator and the Central Bank of Nigeria annual report from a period of 38 years covering from 1981 to 2018, which were in turn analyzed using the error correction model (ECM) method of estimation. The result of the Johansen cointegration test revealed that government capital spending on defence, recurrent spending on defence, foreign direct investment and misery index have common trends in the long run. The outcome of the normalized cointegration disclosed a negative and significant relationship between government capital spending on defence and misery index, while a positive and significant long run relationship exists between government recurrent spending on defence and misery index. The short run analysis pointed to a positive and significant relationship between previous year’s misery index and current year’s misery index. The study thus recommended that government defence spending be reassessed to make it development oriented and proper monitoring of defence spending be carried out.