Militarism, Civilianism, Inflation and Output Growth in Nigeria: An Econometric Study

Abstract: The study investigates the impact of military and democratic systems of government on the output growth and inflation conditions of the Nigerian economy. The study utilized relevant econometric modeling and estimation of hypothesized relations, employing causality and cointegration procedure. The results indicate that in the short-run, both military and democratic regimes that ruled Nigeria reserved the capacity to cause real growth in the country’s GDP. The observed short-run causally significant relationship between GDP growths and the economic policies and activities of the two regimes are equally sustainable in the long-run. Notwithstanding, whereas in the long-run democracy was found to cause positive growth, militarism was observed to cause negative growth. In the case of inflation, the short-run results indicated that both military and civilian regimes associated remarkably with inflation in the economy, however, the observed significant relationships were not causal. In the long-run however, both regimes were observed to have long-run equilibrium relationship with inflation during the period under study. For the military rule, the observed long-run relationship with inflation was negative, while it was positive for democratic regimes. This implies that the policies and activities implemented in Nigeria by democratic regimes were inflationary as opposed to those of the military which were anti-inflationary in the course of time. Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that Nigeria should continue to uphold democracy and its ideals instead of authoritarianism.

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Authors: Chinedu B. Ezirim, Enyinna Okpara, Umaru Mohammed