Abstract

This study examines the contribution of non oil export to the growth of the Nigerian economy for the period 1985-2015. The economy is experiencing a fall in exchange earning, a fall in GDP, depletion of external reserve, scarcity of foreign exchange, and high cost of goods. This is as a result of the sudden fall in international oil price. Thus, this forms the motivation for the study. Augmented Dickey Fuller was used to test for unit root and to ascertain the stationarity of the variables. The result showed non oil exports to be stationary at level while economic growth proxied by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and exchange rate were stationary at first difference. Auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) model was then employed to ascertain the relationship between non oil exports and GDP. The Bound test conducted showed the presence of cointegration which means a long run relationship among the variables existed. The ARDL regression result indicated a positive and significant relationship between non oil exports and GDP. This means non oil exports contributed significantly to economic growth in Nigeria. The result also revealed that exchange rate had a negative though not significant relationship with GDP which is in line with economic theory. The study recommended making legislation that makes participation in non oil sectors like agriculture, solid minerals and manufacturing easy by both local and foreign investors, provision of credit at lower interest rate to the non oil sectors and direct participation in developing these sectors by the government.

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