Thirteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Corruption is a concept harmful to growth and economic development of a nation as it influences economy by tempering with productivity and the inflows and outflows of investment. Corruption has been at its top in Nigeria because of the broad disparity in the sharing of national income. Public enterprises become an avenue of accumulating resources with weakness of the legal system. Anti-corruption agencies lack of sense of patriotism and nationalism. The general public has material inclinations and obsession for quick wealth. This study examines the effect of corruption on economic growth in Nigeria from 1999 to 2016 by way of using secondary data of corruption perception index as proxy for corruption and gross domestic product as proxy for economic growth of the same period. The study reviews relevant literature so as to bridge knowledge gaps. The study employs Granger Causality Model for the purpose of testing the cause and effect relationship between corruption perception index and gross domestic product. The findings show a unidirectional causality relationship between corruption index and gross domestic product. For the purpose of projection, the study also employs Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model and the results show a consistent trend of the scores of corruption index from 2016 to the next five years, which call for a policy change in government to reverse poor scores.