This study examines how much of the variance in economic growth can be explained by various categories of imports in Nigeria. The study is set to investigate whether it is the import-led or export-led growth hypothesis that holds for Nigeria. The Johansen testing approach to cointegration and the standard desk top pairwise Granger-causality test technique were implimented to achieve this objective. The cointegration test results demonstrate that the relationship between economic growth and decomposed import variables in Nigeria are stable and coalescing in the long run. Particular categories of interest in this study are Food & Life Animal, Manufactured Goods, and Machinery & Transport Equipment as the trio constitute over 75 percent of aggregate import bills during the period under review. Evidence from the pairwise granger casualty tests, contrary to expectation, suggests that import-led growth hypothesis does not hold for Nigeria. These results cannot be divorced from certain factors such as lack of capacity to take advantage of the advanced technologies embodied in the imported capital goods, inability to sustain installed manufacturing capacity and corrupt practices in procurement processes, associated with contracts for the importation of manufactured and capital goods for most failed capital projects.
Keywords: Cointrgration, Disaggregated Imports, Exports, GDP growth, Granger Causality
