Infrastructural Development, Poverty Reduction and Economic Growth in Nigeria

In spite of massive revenue emanating from oil wealth, Nigeria has not been able to join the league of developed nations who have made infrastructural development and poverty reduction a frontline policy of their developmental process. This has led to critical thinking as to the exact growth implications of infrastructural development and poverty reduction approaches by the successive government of the federation. This study employed the vector auto-regressive approach to analyse the times series data on the relationship between infrastructural development, poverty reduction and output growth. We also used the impulse response function and variance decomposition to explain the responses of output to shocks within the model. The findings revealed that infrastructural development and poverty reduction positively influence economic growth in Nigeria. The impulse response functions showed that poverty reduction exhibited an inverse relationship with economic growth which means that at such periods, as economic growth is rising, poverty reduction was reducing. The study suggests that access and development of infrastructural facilities must be ensured to attain an accelerated economic growth regime, and subsequently put economic development underway. Also, poverty reduction mechanisms have to be expanded and sustained to achieve an egalitarian society that we desire.