The study examined the relationship between government spending on education and national development in Nigeria using secondary data from the period 2001 to 2017. The study adopted gross domestic product as proxy for national development and the dependent variable; while government spending on education (representing Federal Government annual budgetary provision for the education sector) and inflation were used as the explanatory variables. Time series data for the study period was collected from the Federal Ministry of Finance, Office of the Accountant-General of the Federation and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Official Gazette. The study employed descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis based on the E-view 10 software as techniques of data analysis. The results provided evidence that government spending of education had significant positive effect on national development (at 5% level), while inflation had an insignificant effect on national development (at 13%). Overall, the study concluded that government spending on education has statistically significant positive effect on national at 5% with a probability of F-statistics value of 0.000000. This means that government spending on education will enhance the availability of high level manpower that will ultimately bring about improvements in productivity leading to increase in national development. Based the findings, the study recommend that government should increase annual budgetary allocation to education sector to 26% of total annual budget in line with the UNESCO requirements; that the responsible organs of government should set targets and goals aimed at minimizing as much as possible (if not completely eradicating) misappropriation of funds.
Keywords: Education, Government spending, Inflation, National Development, Output, Productivity
