IMPACT OF INSECURITY ON HEALTH EDUCATION IN NIGERIA

This study investigates the dynamic relationship between insecurity, public expenditure, and human development outcomes, focusing on the trade-offs between security and social sector spending. Employing a quantitative time-series analysis of annual data from 1990-2025, the research examines how reported civilian fatalities (a proxy for insecurity) interact with government health expenditure, military spending, crude death rates, and educational enrolment. Methodologically, the analysis employs unit root tests (ADF and PP), Johansen cointegration, Vector Autoregression (VAR), and ARDL bounds testing to distinguish between short-run dynamics and long-run equilibrium relationships. The findings reveal a significant negative correlation between insecurity and health spending, supporting the “crowding-out” hypothesis. Interestingly, education enrolment shows consistent improvement despite rising insecurity, suggesting a more complex relationship. The Johansen test confirms the existence of long-run cointegrating relationships among the variables, indicating their interconnected evolution over time. However, diagnostic checks and stability tests (CUSUM) confirm the robustness of the estimated models. The study concludes that persistent insecurity structurally reorients fiscal priorities away from health and underscores the need for an integrated policy framework that balances immediate security imperatives with long-term investments in human capital to achieve