ASSESSING THE CONTRIBUTION OF NON-OIL EXPORTS TO ECONOMIC GROWTH IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Oil has been the mainstay of the Nigerian economy for over five decades; this led to the levelling of Nigeria as a mono-economy. However, despite the dominance of oil, significant other exports include food, non-oil minerals, agricultural raw materials, manufacturing and merchandise. This study assessing the contribution of non-oil exports to economic growth in Nigeria. The data used for the study is for the period 1990 to 2023. The main method of analysis used for the work is the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) cointegration method. However, additional tools such as the Error Correction Model (ECM) and Granger causality test were used to add dynamism to the study results. The results of the long-run analysis show that manufacturing export has a negative but statistically insignificant effect on economic growth, but food export has a positive and statistically significant effect on economic growth, while merchandise export is positive but statistically insignificant; export of primary commodities excluding oil has a negative but statistically insignificant effect on economic growth. The results also show that trade openness has a positive and statistically significant effect on economic growth. The result of bound testing shows cointegration and the existence of the long-run relationship between the dependent and independent variables. The results of the Granger Causality that show the short-run relationship between variables show that the independent variables (export of manufacturing, food, merchandise, primary commodity excluding oil and trade openness) Granger causes the dependent variable (economic growth). The paper recommends boosting the export of major export commodities and creating more export-friendly policies and environments.