The Effect of Government Expenditure on Yam Yield in Nigeria

The broad objective of this study is the analysis of the long and short run effect of government expenditure on yam yield in Nigeria. The study applied descriptive statistics and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) econometric approach to the secondary data collected from Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin and FAOSTAT. The descriptive analysis shows that yam output was increasing in Nigeria with decreasing trend in yield. The result of the econometric analysis indicates that agricultural government expenditure does not have significant long and short-run effects on yam production and yield. This is because the real per capita agricultural government expenditure is small. The study concludes that although, agricultural government expenditure does not have significant long and short-run effects on yam production and yield, it is positively correlated with agricultural inputs used in yam production. Based on the findings from the study, various recommendations were made, which include the need to increase the share of agricultural public expenditure in total government expenditure in Nigeria, which stood at 2%, can be increased to 4% which is the average for Sub-Sahara Africa, while targeting 10% recommended in the Maputo Declaration.