Socioeconomic Infrastructures Development: Pathways for Spurring Inclusive Growth in Nigeria

Abstract

Following the Infrastructure-Led Development theoretical taught path that, provision of suitable infrastructures are catalysts for inclusive growth through enhanced real economic activities; thus, associated with the profound problem of infrastructure conditions and inclusive growth in Nigeria, this study examines the impacts of Nigeria’s education, health, road & construction, transport & communication, and energy infrastructure investments as socio-economic infrastructures on gross domestic product per person employed as inclusive growth indicator. Yearly secondary data from 1988 to 2023 were gathered from the 2023 Statistical Bulletin of the ‘Central Bank of Nigeria, the National Bureau of Statistics, and the Development Indicators of the World Bank’. Applying the ‘Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL)’ processes, the produced evidence showed palpably that, except investment in transport & communication infrastructures which exerted short-run positively insignificant impact, and long-run directly significant impact on inclusive growth, investments in education, health, road & construction, and energy infrastructures exhibited positively significant short-run and long-run impacts on Nigeria’s aggregate domestic output per person employed over the sampled period. This, necessitated the conclusive highlight that socio-economic infrastructures development are pivotal pathways for driving real economic activities to enhance inclusive growth in Nigeria. Therefore, the study emphasized that to prop up inclusive growth in Nigeria, public sector expansionary allocative policy for improved education, health, road and construction, transport & communication, and energy infrastructures should be given purposeful consideration.