Paper Title
Political Clientelism And The Nigerian Economic Growth (1999 To 2014)

Abstract
One of the major constraints to economic growth and development all over the World is the level of corruption in government expenditure. In spite of various anti-corruption Institutions established by various governments at different times, there seem not to have been a lasting solution to the menace. Nigeria as a nation being part of the global village is not exempted from this trend and has created a number of agitations in the minds of rational thinkers in academics. By various classifications, Nigeria has been rated as one of the most corrupt nations in the world. Consequences of corruption in the country include low level of industrialization, high and rising level of unemployment, high and rising level of inflation and poverty. It is in the light of these that this study focused on Political clientelism as a channel of corruption in Nigeria and its effects on economic growth with a view to determining the possibility of an objective policy dictates to address this problem.. The research designed adopted was ex-post facto survey and descriptive statistics. The study made use of both primary and secondary data. Primary data was collected through the use of questionnaire completed by 306 respondents drawn from both the private and public sectors; while the secondary data was obtained from sources such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund Development Indicators and the National Bureau of Statistics Reports. For reliability of the research instrument, a cronbach alpha of 0.847 was obtained. Descriptive statistics, simple bivariate regression and Pearson Moment Correlation were employed to analyze the primary data while tables and charts with simple percentages were used to analyze the secondary data. The results obtained showed that there is a statistical significant relationship between low rate of economic growth in Nigeria and Political Clientelism (r = 0.549, p<0.05) with beta co-efficient of 0.556 (β = 0.556). Analysis of the secondary data also revealed that the economy is still characterized by high level of unemployment, inflation, poverty and low level of industrialization in spite of so much money being expended annually by the governments. The study therefore concluded that there exist a significant relationship between the low rate of economic growth in Nigeria and Political Clientelism as a channel of corruption identified in this study. The study recommended that public institutions in the country be strengthened to be able to reduce the level of corruption and thus promote economic growth. Keywords- Corruption, Economic Growth and Political Clientelism,