ASSESSING THE RELEVANCE OF PUBLIC SPENDING ON POVERTY

The news of Africa’s largest market and economy becoming the global capital of poverty was shocking to economist across the country, given the expenditure culture of the democratic administration in the Nation with their outstanding borrowing prowess, one had expected the continuous borrowing culture to pave way to employment generation, economic growth and development, but rather increasing government expenditure rather retard economic growth and ploughed back the populace into abject poverty. Based on these lingering issues to justify the implications of government spending on poverty alleviation across Nigeria, the study assesses the relevance of public spending on poverty alleviation in Nigeria from 1981 till 2019 with statistical data’s extracted from world development indicator for Nigeria 2020. The study implored augmented dickey fuller (ADF) test statistics to assess the stability and stationarity of the series, johansen test for long run relationship to checkmate the relationships the series exhibit, while multiple regression was carried out to validate individual variable effect on poverty alleviation strive of the government in the country. The results justified the absence of a sustainable long run relationship between government spending and poverty alleviation in Nigeria. Regression outcome further proves that, government expenditure on agriculture and education reduces or alleviates poverty in the country, as against expenditures on transport which rather compound the tendencies of poverty emergence in the economy. The study recommend that the government should focus on short-term government expenditure policy actions that have the potential to reduce poverty in Nigeria, as there is no long-run relationship between public expenditure and poverty reduction, according to the cointegration test and further concluded that government expenditure on economically viable sectors has a causal linkage with poverty alleviation

ASSESSING THE RELEVANCE OF PUBLIC SPENDING ON POVERTY ALLEVIATION IN NIGERIA