FDI, ECONOMIC FREEDOM AND ECONOMIC GROWTH OF NIGERIA
This paper investigates Foreign Direct Investment, Economic Freedom and Economic Growth of Nigeria between 1995 and 2018. Specifically, the data on: Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows, Economic Freedom (Aggregate index) and the data on real gross domestic product (RGDP) were used during the analysis. Time-series data were tested for stationarity using the Augmented Dickey-Fuller Unit Root test method. Vector Autoregressive (VAR) estimation method was adopted to examine the effect of FDI, Economic Freedom on Economic growth. The interactive effect of FDI and Economic Freedom on Economic growth was determined using regression analysis while Granger Causality test method was adopted for determining the causality relationship among the variables. The result of the Vector Autoregressive (VAR) suggests that both FDI and Economic freedom do not have a significant effect on economic growth in Nigeria. The result of regression analysis shows that the joint coefficient of both FDI and EF is negative and not significant. The result of Granger Causality revealed that there is a uni-directional relationship between RGDP and FDI and between EF and FDI respectively. The research recommends that the federal government of Nigeria should adopt appropriate foreign trade strategies to enhance the impact of FDI on economic growth in Nigeria.