Deterrents to Human Capital Development in Nigeria
A Case Study of Lagos State Civil Service, Nigeria
Abstract
The inevitable roles of sufficient and effective manpower in the process of
sustainable economic development have received a lot of attention in the
literature. This is premised on the experience of success recorded by
organizations and countries that invested heavily in their human resources. With
Nigeria in search of the best approach to address its pervasive economic
challenges, there is an urgent need for a holistic and cautious choice of economic
policies and programmes. This research was motivated by the urgent need to
focus on the country's human resources management, which has suffered from years of
neglect as a result of the oil boom in Nigeria, and consequently resulted in the persistent
level of poverty in the country despite its resource abundance. Hence, the study
examines the factors which inhibit the human capital development from exerting
the expected influence on the developmental state and economic diversification in
Nigeria taking inferences from Lagos State. The descriptive survey research
design was used in carrying out the study. It adopts a discrete analysis to harness
the link between human capital development, economic development and
diversification using both Binary Logistic Regression (BLR) and Chi-Square (X
2
)
at 0.05 level of significance. One research question and two hypotheses were
answered and tested respectively in this study. The findings reveal that human
capital development is statistically significant to diversification of the Nigerian
economy and that government intervention in the growth process of the country is
not only necessary but urgently needed to arrest the state of the economy, which is
not only devastating but also a threat to the future of the nation and its unborn
generations. Prominent among the policy recommendations is the need for a
strong institutional framework and implementation of the UNESCO
recommendation of 26% budgetary allocation to education in developing
countries for the country to surmount its current economic challenges.
