Institutions and the Resource Curse in Nigeria

The objective of this study is to look at the relationship that exists between institution and resource curse in Nigeria using secondary data from 1986 to 2012. The study used descriptive statistics and the unit root test was tested using Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF). Granger causality was also carried out in addition to correlation and regression analyses. However, Economic Freedom of the World ( EFW ) was represented by strong institution and Gross Domestic Product ( GDP ) and crude oil export ( OE ) as resource curse, Results showed that there is a negative relationship between strong institution of Nigeria and resource curse with coefficients of 0.003874 between EFW and OE . The results concluded that there is a need to strengthen the institutions (Size of government, legal structure and security of property right, regulation of credits etc) in Nigeria with a view to avoiding the pitfall of resource curse