Veritatis Gaudium: Multidisciplinary Journal of Postgraduate Studies

This study reassesses the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in Nigeria by examining the relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation while explicitly accounting for structural breaks arising from major economic policy shocks. Annual time-series data covering the period 1980–2024 were analyzed using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach, complemented by Zivot–Andrews and Bai–Perron structural break tests. The ARDL bounds test confirms the existence of a stable long-run cointegration relationship among the variables. The results show that economic growth and its squared term have positive and statistically significant effects on environmental degradation, indicating that the EKC hypothesis does not hold for Nigeria over the study period. Energy consumption and population growth also significantly increase carbon emissions, while trade openness exerts a weak positive effect. The identified structural breaks associated with the 2004 oil revenue expansion, the 2009 global financial crisis, the 2016 oil price collapse, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the 2023 fuel subsidy removal, and the 2024 exchange rate liberalization reforms significantly alter the long-run and short-run growth–environment relationship, demonstrating that environmental outcomes are regime-dependent. The study concludes that Nigeria has not reached the income threshold at which economic growth improves environmental quality. It recommends promoting renewable energy adoption, strengthening environmental regulation, and, importantly, integrating structural-break considerations into macroeconomic and environmental policymaking, so that future economic reforms and external shocks are accompanied by environmental mitigation measures that support sustainable and low-carbon development.

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