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Abstract
After about a decade of exiting sovereign debt havoc; there is now another panic that a new sovereign-debt problem may loom in Nigeria given the current rising debt profile in the country. In this light ,this paper sought to enhance the existing literature on the debt growth-nexus by analyzing the relationship between debt variables and economic growth within Solow (1956) growth framework. The study adopted econometric technique of Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) model and applied on time-series data for Nigeria spanning between 1981 and 2016. The results show that external debt is negatively related with economic growth in both short and long runs. The evidence suggests that increase in external debt will lead to decline in economic growth. Based on the findings, the study suggests that debt service obligation should not be allowed to rise more than foreign exchange earnings and that the loan contracted should be invested in profitable and productive ventures, which will generate a reasonable amount of money for debt repayment.