Paper Title
CONTRIBUTION OF GOVERNMENT CAPITAL EXPENDITURE TOTRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA (1999-2021)

Abstract
Abstract - Transport infrastructural development promotes economic growth and development. It aids trade, other sectors and physical cross-border dealings. It, also, fosters ease of doing business and movement of people and commodities. Government expenditure is one of the major sources of financing infrastructural development. In Nigeria, government allocation to infrastructure is rising at an increasing rate yet visible infrastructure development is inadequate. Much more, empirical studies on government expenditure did not focus on infrastructural development, which is the intermediate goal, but focused on economic growth, which is the ultimate goal. Therefore, this study investigated the effects of government expenditure on transport infrastructural development in Nigeria within the temporal scope 1999-2021. The study was anchored on unbalanced growth theory. Transport composite index was the proxy for transport infrastructural development. Transport capital expenditure and Transport current expenditure represented government expenditure. Transport growth and consumer price index were the control variables. The study sourced secondary data from the various editions of Central Bank of Nigeria statistical bulletin and African Infrastructural Development reports. The estimation technique was autoregressive distributed lag model. The study found that, transport capital expenditure, transport output and inflation exhibited insignificant positive short-run effects on transport infrastructural development. Their respective coefficients were 0.008455, 0.000226 and 0.003027; and p-values were 0.9143, 0.7165 and 0.5719 at 0.05, that is, 5% level of significance (LOS). Transport recurrent expenditure exhibited insignificant short-run effect on transport infrastructural development with a co-efficient of -0.010881 and p-value of 0.7232 at 0.05 LOS. The study concluded that, government capital expenditure exerts positive effects on infrastructural development and recurrent expenditure exerts negative effect on it. The study recommends, government should increase its capital expenditure on transport infrastructure to foster significant development of the sector. It should also employ private-public partnership as a means of financing transport projects like road networks, railways and mass transit scheme in Nigeria. Keywords - Government Expenditure, Transportation, Infrastructure, Economic Growth