Financial Inclusion and Private Domestic Investment in Nigeria

Slemem Lamba; Freeman Aye-Agele Ph. D; Godfrey O. Ojeka Ph. D

doi:10.56201/ijefm.v11.no2.2026.pg60.74

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Financial Inclusion and Private Domestic Investment in Nigeria

Slemem Lamba, Freeman Aye-Agele Ph. D, Godfrey O. Ojeka Ph. D

Abstract

The growing economy and population of Nigeria offers great important opportunities for prioritization of financial inclusion policy and private domestic investments. Although Nigeria has witnessed some levels of progress in financial inclusion drive, however, large proportion of its adult population still remained formally financially excluded or underserved. This impedes sustained local investments growth and hamper inclusive and sustainable economic growth and development. This study examined the impact of financial inclusion on private domestic investments outcomes in Nigeria from 1985 to 2024. Secondary data were sourced from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (2024), the Central Bank of Nigeria’s Statistical Bulletin (2024), and Our World in Data (2024). The Autoregressive Distributed Lag technique was employed for data analysis. The results revealed that financial inclusion has diverse effects on variables used where private deposits negatively affected domestic investments in both horizons, while credit supply to the private sector, number of banks’ branches, GDP growth and interest rates exerted a strong positive and significant influence. This underscores the importance of credit intermediation and the remaining variables above for the promotion of productive private domestic investments in Nigeria. Policy recommendations therefore includes strengthening financial inclusion frameworks, expanding access to affordable formal financial products and services and improving digital financial infrastructure to stimulate private domestic productive investments to reduce dependence on volatile portfolio flows in Nigeria.

Keywords

Financial inclusionprivate domestic investmentfinancial literacyNigeria.

References

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Financial Inclusion and Private Domestic Investment in Nigeria

Abstract

Keywords

References

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