Money Laundering: A Threat to Sustainable Democracy in Nigeria

Democracy is based on the participation of citizens in creating a structure of governance which can effectively deliver a vision of national unity and commonwealth. Equitable wealth distribution in a democratic system of government often have over-bearing impacts on the socio-economy of the people as well as the political stability, peace and security of a nation.  However, a dangerous trend may exist when certain individuals in the society have access to the commonwealth of the people, and use same for personal interest by siphoning it into local and foreign accounts out of the reach of the original owners (i.e. the citizens). This paper focuses on the impacts of money laundering on nascent democracies with emphasis on Nigeria. It x-rays the roles that the beneficiaries of these illicit funds play on the economy, society, institutions, security and political structure. Using the existing literature, this paper found out that money laundering as well as its predicate crimes has devastating effects on the socio-economic, security and political structure of Nigeria and for democracy to grow and be sustained, the menace of money laundering must be vigorously fought to a stand still. Keywords: Democracy, Money Laundering, Distribution of Wealt

Trade openness, institutions and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

This research investigates the interactive effect of trade openness and the institutional quality on economic growth in sub-Sahara Africa. The sample consists of 38 sub-Saharan African countries and covers the period 1986-2015. Pooled OLS, fixed effect, and Dynamic GMM were used as estimation techniques. The empirical section used a nonlinear growth regression specification that interacts trade openness with law and order, bureaucratic quality, corruption, government stability, and democratic accountability. The study found that corruption, government stability, law and order, and bureaucratic quality as institutional quality variables harm economic growth. The interaction of trade openness and institutional quality variables positively impacted economic growth. It is an indication that trade openness better impacted economic growth in the presence of high-quality institutional variables

AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF EFFECTS OF MILITARY SPENDING ON ECONOMIC GROWTH IN NIGERIA: A BOUND TESTING APPROACH TO COINTEGRATION 1989 - 2013

The study examines the effect of military expenditure on output in Nigeria both in the short-run and in the long-run period. In addition, it verified whether military expenditure is an economically non-contributive activity using ARDL bounds testing approach to co-integration. Results showed that military spending has negative and significant effect on output in the short-run but positive and significant effect in the long-run. Labour and capital have positive and significant effects both in the long-run and short-run. In addition, labour has the highest coefficient (3.0709) in the long-run.The study concludes that government should reduce its expenditure on defense and concentrate more on human capital development, since military spending contributes nothing to output in the short-run