Agricultural Sub-Sector Outputs and Economic Growth in Nigeria, 1985 2024: Evidence from an ARDL Bounds Testing Approach

Agriculture remains central to Nigeria's pursuit of diversified, non-oil-driven growth, yet the relative contribution of its sub-sectors to national output remains empirically unclear despite decades of policy attention. This study examined the effect of crop production and fisheries output on economic growth in Nigeria between 1985 and 2024, determined the causality between agricultural output and growth, and identified which sub-sector contributed most significantly to growth. Annual time-series data on real gross domestic product, crop production, fisheries output, gross fixed capital formation, and total labour force were analyzed using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach and the pairwise Granger causality test, following unit root and diagnostic testing. The ARDL bounds test confirmed a long run cointegrating relationship among the variables (F = 22.45). Crop production and fisheries output both exerted positive and statistically significant long-run effects on growth, with crop production contributing most significantly (long-run elasticity of 0.64, against 0.25 for fisheries), while gross fixed capital formation showed an unexpected negative effect and labour force was statistically insignificant. Causality ran unidirectionally from crop production to growth, and from growth to fisheries output and capital formation. The error correction term (–0.26) confirmed a moderately fast return to long-run equilibrium following short run shocks. The study concludes that agricultural sub-sector performance, particularly crop production, meaningfully drives Nigeria's economic growth, and recommends sustained investment in crop production and improved execution of public capital expenditure.