TY - JOUR AU - Kazeem B. Ajide AU - Ibrahim L. Ridwan PY - 2019/04/30 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Deterrents to Human Capital Development in Nigeria JF - Unilag Journal of Humanities JA - ujh VL - 6 IS - 2 SE - Articles DO - UR - http://ujh.unilag.edu.ng/article/view/332 AB - 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 (X2) 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. ER -