Human capital development in Nigeria: an empirical assessment on the impact of corruption

Corruption has been documented as one of the most difficult hurdles in the development of institutions as it snares most developing economies in a vicious cycle of underdevelopment. More specifically is corruption within the human capital sector which is extremely detrimental to economic growth. The objective of this paper therefore is to examine the impact corruption has on human capital development. It tests the corruption - human capital nexus using multivariate regression for a period from 1996-2014. Secondary school enrolment and the Human Development Index are employed as proxies of human capital development while the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index is used as a measure of corruption. The study also controls for variables that may affect human capital development such as government expenditure on education, age dependency ratio, urbanisation and GDP per capita. The findings suggest that corruption is a major deterrent to human capital development in Nigeria when school enrolment rates are used as the dependent variable. However, corruption has no statistically significant impact on human capital development when mortality rates per 1,000 births are employed as a dependent variable. Since education is a major element through which skills and knowledge can be acquired, curbing corruption in this sector in the country is recommended so that human capital will be developed effectively in order to tackle corruption effectively in turn.