OUTPOURING OF FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN NIGERIA: PUSH OR PULL?

Foreign direct investment is sensitive to domestic and external factors. The sensitivity to external factors means changes in global productivity levels (financial sentiments) may produce a substantial impact on foreign direct investment in Nigeria has been one of the key subjects in the extent of literature. The study is aimed at investigating the pull and push factor determinants of foreign direct investment in Nigeria. The study adopted the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Approach to achieve the long and short-run determinants. The study uses secondary data sets from 1986 to 2018 with the application of EViews 9 output to analyze data. The result shows that foreign direct investment is sensitive to pull (depreciation of exchange rate and interest rate) and push factors (US gross domestic product and US interest rate) in the long and short run. The study concludes that foreign direct investment into Nigeria is due to ‘pull’ factors rather than ‘push’ factors. The implication of the study showed that foreign direct investment flow surges cannot be denied in determining the macroeconomic performance in Nigeria. The choice of foreign direct investment seems to future more in Nigeria’s economy. Understanding of the factors that drive foreign direct investment can inform efforts by government and experts on how best to attract foreign direct investment to Nigeria. The study concluded that the fluctuation in Foreign direct investment is determined by both domestic and global factors. These factors have a different level of volatility on foreign direct investment. Therefore, the study recommends the judicious management of the pull factor determinants to guarantee internal economic especially at this time when the Nigerian economy is facing a continuous fall in global crude oil price.