Abstract
This study examined the impact of fiscal policy and public debt on economic growth in
Nigeria over the period 2000–2024. The persistent challenges of slow economic growth,
rising public debt, recurrent fiscal deficits, and increasing debt servicing obligations have
raised concerns regarding the effectiveness of fiscal policy in promoting sustainable
economic development. An ex post facto research design was adopted, utilizing annual time
series data obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), National Bureau of Statistics
(NBS), Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), Debt Management Office (DMO), and the
World Development Indicators (World Bank). Gross Domestic Product (GDP) served as the
proxy for economic growth, while government consumption expenditure, and tax revenue,
were employed as explanatory variables. Data were analyzed using the Augmented Dickey
Fuller (ADF) unit root test, , CUSUM stability test, and multiple regression analysis. The
empirical results revealed that all variables were integrated of order one, I(1) The regression
results showed that government consumption expenditure exerted a positive but statistically
non-significant effect on economic growth (β = 0.233010; p = 0.2829), while tax revenue had
a positive and statistically significant effect (β = 0.434179; p = 0.0004). Based on these
findings, the study recommends that government should improve the efficiency of public
expenditure through greater transparency and capital-oriented spending, strengthen tax
administration and broaden the tax base to enhance domestic revenue mobilization, maintain
fiscal discipline by ensuring that deficit financing supports productive investments, adopt
prudent debt management strategies that limit excessive borrowing and prioritize
concessional financing, and ensure that borrowed funds are channeled into economically
viable projects capable of generating returns sufficient to sustain debt servicing and promote
long-term economic growth