Defence And Health Sector In Nigeria Essay

Defence and health expenditures are major concerns to any economy in the world, this is because, the services rendered by these sectors are essential and a large share of the budget is absorbed by this sectors. Literatures have shown that the effects of defense and health spending on economic growth are important and controversial topic among researchers.
Nigeria spends a large portion of its expenditure on defense and health sector in order to maintain a credible level of both security of life, property and health of her citizens due its vital ethnicity in geopolitical position and other outstanding dispute and differences that escalated over the time coupled with different diseases in some regions of the country (Abu and Abdullahi, 2010).
Furthermore, the health status in Nigeria is ranked low among other developing countries in the same category. Life expectancy was put at 26years in 1970, 21-30 in 1988, 52 years in 2011 and 52.60 in 2014 (World Bank, 2001) and crude death rate, in that same year as 14%. It is estimated that 124 out of 1000 new births do not survive beyond age 5. Only 39.56% of male and 42.25% of female survive up to the age of 65 years. There are close to 3million adults (ages 15-49) living with HIV. While the estimated HIV/AIDS prevalence rate is 3.7million. Nigeria has large stock of health workers that is comparable to that of Egypt and South Africa. However, births attended by skilled health personnel are estimated at 39 percent of total birth, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA World Fact Book, 2014). Health sector expenditure has shown an increasing trend over the years. For example 1970 health expenditure stood at N7.4m, it increased to 8.00m in 1971, N6.80m in 1972, N16.60m in 1973, N90.20 in 2013 and N99.10 in 2015, (CBN Bulletin, 1999). In recent times there has been increase in defence and health expenditure in developing countries such as Nigeria, which has drastically reduced funds for meeting other sectors needs. Defence and health expenditures account for one of the highest sectoral budgetary allocation in Nigeria. Thus defence and health
Kafanchan crises in 1987 and another coup attempt by Major Okah, and with the recent Boko-Haram crises in some states in the Northeast just to mention a few. In fact different sort and forms of crises occurred within the time frame of this research work 1970-2015.
According to Alexander (2011), defence and health sector may enhance the supply of skilled labour, healthy investment environment, thereby alleviating an important growth constraint. Whichever, defence and health sector expenditures contribute to economic development even as it absorbs large resources at the expense of other sectors. The above views are indications that the effects of defence and health expenditure could be positive or negative which is the focus of this research. The research is guided by 3 basic research questions which are:
• What is the effect of Defence and Health sectors spending on Nigerian economic