Banks' credit to the private sector and economic growth in Nigeria: The moderating role of digitalization

Inspired by the desire to take a unique trajectory with the greater goal of new knowledge addition, this study examined the moderating effect of digitalization on the triangular relationship between digitalization, banks’ credit to private sector and economic growth in Nigeria for 2009 – 2021. The highly debatable direction of the relationship between credit to the private sector and economic growth in Nigeria has remained unresolved; by throwing digitalization in the mix, this study seeks to ascertain if there is a substantial shift in the direction of the subsisting argument with refence to Nigeria. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach was applied due to the mixed order of integration results obtained from the Unit Roots Test, which accounted for some structural breaks. For this study, the long-run results carry more prominence than the short-run since there is inherent room for adjustments. The empirical results show that private sector credit has a positive and significant impact on economic growth in Nigeria in the short run. However, in the long run, credit to private sector has a positive and insignificant impact on economic growth in Nigeria. The results also revealed that ddigitalization does not moderate the effect of banks' credit to the private sector on economic growth in Nigeria for the period reviewed. Because of the strategic role of financial intermediation played by deposit money banks, the paper supports the ongoing efforts of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in deepening the integration of digitalization into the financial services sector.