SECURITY CHALLENGES AND FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT INFLOWS IN AFRICA, NIGERIA IN PERSPECTIVE: A STYLIZED FACTS APPROACH

Abstract

This study examined the effect of security challenges on FDI in Africa, Nigeria in perspective. Specifically the study traced among others the effect of terrorism, political violence, and religious tension on FDI inflows in Nigeria using tables, charts and trends techniques to examine the FDI inflows in African countries bedeviled with security challenges to justify the effect of these variables on FDI inflows as identified in literature as factors that determine the inflows of FDI to resource-rich country. The stylized facts, as the empirical regularities in search of theoretical and causal explanations of these variables discovered that security challenges proxied by terrorism, political violence, and religious tension affect FDI inflow to Nigeria. In Nigeria and many other African countries, challenges like petty crimes, kidnapping, armed robberies, ethnic/religious killings, ritualism, Xenophobia, civil war armed insurgency such as: Niger Delta problem, Boko Haram massacres in the North-east, Fulani Herdsmen mass
killing everywhere with cases of raping and the agitation by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) for the Sovereign State of Biafra and banditry in the North-west are the new waves. Thus, this study among other things, recommends the intensification of effort in the war against insecurity issues in Nigeria.