Migration and Economic Development in Nigeria

Christopher N. Ekong, Okon J. Umoh, Uduakobong E. Ukpe — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The study investigated the effect of migration on economic development in Nigeria from 1981 to 2023. The study used human development index (HDI) to proxy economic development as the dependent variable while net migration rate (NETMIG), poverty (POV), foreign direct investment (FDI) and unemployment (UNEM) were used as the explanatory variables. Descriptive statistics, unit root test, bound cointegration test, as well as Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) were employed to analyze the data. The study reveals that both in the short run and long run, net migration (NETMIG) had a negatively insignificant impact on economic development; in the short run and long run unemployment (UNEM) had a positive and significant impact on economic development. Also, in the short run, foreign direct investment (FDI) had a positive and significant impact on economic development in Nigeria while it had a negative and insignificant impact on economic development over the data period. The study thus concluded that migration did not promote economic development in Nigeria within the period under review. The study recommends that the Nigerian government should implement targeted migration policies to address specific needs of the country by improving infrastructural provision such as electricity, good roads, adequate pipe borne water etc. and government should improve on working conditions and wages to reduce the pull factor of better job opportunities.

A Neverending Reading: Metalepsis, the Act of Reading, and Adolescent Growth in Contemporary Young Adult Fantasy

Zha Xiangyi — Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Metalepsis the transgression of ontological boundaries between narrative levels has attracted considerable scholarly attention, yet its particular uses within Young Adult (YA) fantasy fiction remain largely unexamined. This article argues that when metalepsis is realised through the diegetic act of reading, it enables YA novels to do something conventional literary criticism has long asserted but rarely demonstrated: to show, in the structure of the narrative itself, how reading assists adolescent growth. Working across three canonical YA fantasies Michael Ende's The Neverending Story (1983), Cornelia Funke's Inkheart (2003), and John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things (2006) and drawing on Klimek's tripartite distinction between descending, ascending, and complex metalepsis, the article develops a model in which the metaleptic transgression of narrative boundaries serves as a structural externalisation of the adolescent protagonist's internal developmental process. Each novel's child protagonist enters the act of reading carrying a specific unresolved confusion concerning identity, power, and emotional loss respectively and the metaleptic mechanism literalises that confusion within an alternative diegetic world, compelling the protagonist to confront and work through it. A further argument concerns the recursive, Möbius-strip structure shared across all three metaleptic forms: this structure mirrors adolescence as a developmental condition transitional, boundary-dissolving, and constitutively unfinished. Taken together, the three analyses suggest that metalepsis, reading, and growing up are not simply thematically aligned in these texts but structurally unified, and that this unity gives narrative form to what reader-response theory has long claimed but left largely abstract.

GPH-International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research

Migration and Economic Development in Nigeria

A Neverending Reading: Metalepsis, the Act of Reading, and Adolescent Growth in Contemporary Young Adult Fantasy