<p><b>Globalization, Trade Liberalization and Economic Growth In Nigeria Bashiru, Ibrahim Amoo</b></p>

This paper considers how globalization and liberalization of trade in Nigeria affect the economic growth of the country based on the years 1990 to 2023. In particular, the research enquires the impact of globalization on the economic growth of Nigeria, the influence of globalization on the economic growth and analyzes the moderating role of trade diversification in the relationship between economic growth and globalization. It uses the estimation method of Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) to estimate the long run linkages between Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the macroeconomic variables of interest including globalization, trade diversification, trade openness, exchange rate, foreign direct investment (FDI) and gross fixed capital formation. The model one shows that trade openness and exchange rate have positive and statistically significant impacts on economic growth which means that further engagement into global trade and maintenance of stable exchange rates help increase the long run GDP growth in Nigeria. On the other hand, globalization has a negative and significant correlation with GDP implying that the existing trend of Nigeria integrating into the global economy can have negative long run effects of structural disequilibrium and reliance. Though there are positive coefficients that mean there is positive association between trade diversification, FDI and capital formation, the effect of these variables is statistically not significant, meaning that they did not make significant contributions to growth during the study period. The elongated model that includes the interaction term between trade diversification and globalization (TD_GLOB) shows that the two variables alone have negative impact concerning GDP, but when the two interact, they have positive and significant effects. This observation suggests that the adoption of effective globalization policies and trade diversification policies may help Nigeria achieve a higher economic performance in the longterm. The strength of the estimated relationships is supported by the high explanatory power of the model (R 2 = 0.9661). In general, the findings demonstrate that single measures of globalization or diversification are not potentially effective as much as openness to trade is the key to the economic growth in Nigeria. Thus, the research paper suggests that policy makers should use a concerted strategy that will bring together globalization and diversification of trade which can be facilitated by appropriate management of exchange rates and structural changes so that economic growth in Nigeria is sustainable and inclusive.