The news media suddenly became awash with breaking news headline. Coincidentally on 22nd February 2018, another set of ‘unspecified’ numbers of young schoolgirls were reportedly kidnapped by unnamed insurgent group(s). Also, by the end of the day, the Transparent International (TI) released its report (Corruption Perception Index-CPI) with Nigeria lowly placed at 148th of the 180 countries examined. In view of this, we investigate the joint significant impact of three different corruption indices and insurgency on tourism in Nigeria.
A monthly data spanning 2005M01 to 2016M12 is employed. Using an ARDL econometric approach and controlling for inflation, the model significantly adjusts with a speed of 1.28% to long-run equilibrium. Both the social protection and quality of public administration indices showed longrun positive significant evidence of tourism receipts while the reverse is the case for fiscal policy rating. Similarly, insurgency exhibits a long-run significantly negative impact on the tourist receipts
which translates to the performance of the industry. These indicators aggregate the performance and sustainability of tourism destinations. As a policy implementation pathway, Nigeria government and security stakeholders should rejig their counter-insurgency efforts to attain the country’s goal of enhancing a buoyant and sustainable tourism industry.
