ABSTRACT

This paper investigated the impact of agricultural funding on unemployment reduction in Nigeria for the period of 1985-2016. The data was collected from secondary sources from CBN statistical bulletin, journal and government documents. To carry out this work, the study employed the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) estimation technique. To test for the properties of time series, the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test was used to determine the stationarity of the variables and Johansen Cointegration test was employed to test for the long-run relationship of the variables. It was discovered that there exist a long-run relationship between the variables in the series. The empirical findings was apparent from the result of the regression analysis that inflation (INF) and interest rate(INR) have negative effect on unemployment(UNPR),banking sector credit to the agricultural sector(BSCR) and government Agricultural Expenditure(GVEX) has positive effect on agriculture. Hence the joint effect of the selected variables has an impact on UNPR. Therefore proper attention should be placed on the implementation of major agricultural policies and Government funds directed towards agriculture should be monitored by various agencies to ensure that there is no diversion of funds and implementation.