An Assessment of Human Capital Development: Nigeria’s Experience

Abstract

The study undertook an assessment of human capital development in Nigeria. Content analysis was adopted to achieve the objective of the study, which was to evaluate Nigeria's current state in terms of human capital development. The study adopted secondary data on government spending on education as a percentage of GDP, government spending on health as a percentage of GDP, life expectancy, literacy rate and per capita income with data sourced from the World Development Indicators. The study employed trend analysis to reveal the data pattern for all the variables considered in this study. Descriptive statistics was also employed using tables to display the data for all the variables, while bar charts were employed to show the position of each of the countries reviewed for each of the variables with the view of comparing the input and output variables in the study. The study concludes that Nigeria's human capital development still lags behind in Africa despite the huge human and material resources it possesses. Low literacy and life expectancy rates indicate that the level of investment in the education and health sectors of the economy is inadequate. Based on the findings, the study recommends that the Federal Government of Nigeria should dedicate more resources to the development of the education and health sectors of the economy and ensure judicious use of resources allocated to these sectors. It further recommends that the Federal Government of Nigeria, through the Federal Ministry of Health, and other relevant agencies of government, should invest in and encourage Health Insurance in Nigeria to increase access to healthcare and reduce out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure in Nigeria.