ECONOMIC GROWTH AND NON OIL EXPORT IN NIGERIA: AN ARDL COINTEGRATION ANALYSIS

Abstract

Oil is the mainstay of the Nigerian economy for over five decades; this led to the leveling of Nigeria as a mono-economy. But despite the dominance of oil, there are significant level of other exports that include food, non-oil minerals, agricultural raw materials, manufacturing and merchandise. This study analyzed the effects of these non oil exports on Nigeria economy. The data used for the study is for the period 1989 to 2022. The main method of analysis used for the work is Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) cointegration method; but additional tools such as Error Correction Model (ECM) and Granger causality test were used in order to add dynamism to the results of the study. The results of long run analysis show that manufacturing export has negative but statistically insignificant effect on economic growth; but, food export has positive and statistically significant effect on economic growth; while merchandise export is positive but statistically insignificant; export of primary commodities excluding oil has negative but statistically insignificant effect on economic growth. The results also show that trade openness has positive and statistically significant effect on economic growth. The result of bound testing shows cointegration and existence of long run relationship between the dependent and independent variables. The results of Granger Causality that show short run relationship between variables show that the independent variables (export of manufacturing, food, merchandise, primary commodity excluding oil and trade openness) Granger cause the dependent variable (economic growth). The paper recommends the boosting of export of major export commodities and creation of more export friendly policies and environments.