Reflecting on the appetite for borrowing and the volatility of crude prices for rapid post-COVID economic recovery initiatives in Nigeria: Implications for Per capita income using a Dynamic ARDL simulation approach

The emphasis is on attaining a swift post-COVID economic recovery in Nigeria. This paper attempts to objectively analyze the complicated link between excessive borrowing, fluctuations in international crude oil prices, and its effect on income per capita in Nigeria. This study offers important insights into the factors influencing income levels in Nigeria by looking at an extensive number of macroeconomic variables, such as capital expenditure, recurrent expenses, domestic and external debt, money supply, crude oil price, inflation, interest rates, GDP growth, and income per capita. The study estimates the model parameters and investigates both long-run and short-run equilibrium relationships using the novel autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) simulation technique, a method renowned for its dependability and consistency in time series analysis. The result shows that present per capita income is strongly impacted by lagged per capita income. The findings demonstrate the stability of income levels across time. Additionally, there are notable short-term impacts of interest rates and the GDP growth rate on per capita income, demonstrating the significance of monetary and fiscal policies in promoting economic expansion and revenue generation. The result emphasizes how inflation and the volatility of crude oil prices affect per capita income, highlighting how susceptible Nigeria's economy is to changes in oil prices and how important it is to control inflation. The analysis finds no evidence of a substantial correlation between capital formation, spending patterns, debt stock, and per capita income, indicating the necessity for a thorough evaluation of resource allocation and debt management strategies. The research results highlight the significance of sustainable economic growth, diversified portfolios, effective debt management, and synchronized fiscal and monetary strategies in order to raise per capita income and advance the well-being of Nigerians. These findings have important ramifications for policy formulation and post-COVID economic recovery efforts in Nigeria.