Meeting the Sustainable Development Goal of Quality Education and External Debt Burden: A Study on Nigeria

The focus of this paper was the effect of external debt burden on the capacity to meet Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of quality education in 2030 with external debt servicing and government annual budgetary allocation to education as proxies for debt burden and quality education respectively. The author captured the following data for the study: annual budgetary allocation to education, external debt stock, external debt service and interest payment on debt from 1970 to 2025, sourced from World Bank data, Federal Office of Statistics (FOS), National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Annual Reports and Accounts, and various other sources. These time series data were subjected to unit root test and found appropriate for OLS analysis. To estimate the model for inference, Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique was employed by the author. The results of the analysis indicated that in the short run, only external debt service payment had significant negative effect on education in Nigeria; while the rest of the variables were not significant at 5% level of significance. Over the long run only external debt stock had significant negative effect on education; while the rest of the variables were not significant at 5% level of significance. Based on the short run results, it was concluded that external debt burden had significant negative effect on education in the period 1970-2025 in Nigeria. Implications of the findings: external debt burden depressed education in Nigeria especially in the reviewed period. ii. This would impact negatively on the quality of education both in the short run and over the long run in Nigeria. iii. If this situation was not reversed, meeting Sustainable Development Goal of quality education in 2030 by Nigeria would be frustrated. Recommendations: Government should place more priority on funding of education by freeing resources from unproductive areas to the education sector. ii. Government should adopt public-private sectors partnership by collaborating with the private sector for reforms.iii. Government should focus more on vocational training by equipping students with practical skills. Government should prioritize educational spending by allocating more budgets to education. Debt restructuring should be adopted by exploring more options to manage debt burden among other recommendations.