AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE INDICATORS OF GOVERNANCE AND INSECURITY IN NIGERIA: 1984-2018

Governance particularly poor governance is a syndrome that is incentivizing security crime in Nigeria and that has constituted impediments to the Nigerian development process. In this regard, this study decentralises governance to its six indicators namely: government accountability; government stability and absence of internal conflicts; control of corruption; bureaucratic quality and rule of law and therefore investigating the impact of each of the six indicators on insecurity in Nigeria. The study utilized Johansen Cointegration and FMOLS to essentially reveal that, poor nature of all of the six indicators of governance except absence of internal conflicts impacts positively on insecurity in Nigeria. Also, among all the poor five indicators that impact positively on insecurity, corruption, government accountability and rule of law are of significant positive impact on insecurity in Nigeria. The study therefore concluded that the bad shape of the indicators of governance contribute to the weak governance system that consequently exacerbate insecurity situation in Nigeria. The study then recommends among others, strengthening and advancing the Nigerian anti-corruption war to match the changing ways of perpetrating corruptions by public office holders particularly officers of the Nigerian security departments should be strictly enforced so as to abate the upsurge of corruption among public office holders thereby suppressing the hiking level of insecurity in the country due to corruption; ensuring full application of law on the insecurity culprits irrespective of the social status and connections so as to serve as deterrent to other defiant in the mix of conformists in the society.