This study examines the impact of infrastructural development and tax burden on economic growth in Nigeria from 1981 to 2024. The theoretical foundation is Barro’s tax smoothing theory, and secondary data were obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria Statistical Bulletin. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag technique was deployed. Results show that in the short run, lagged GDP growth rate was negative while the total population-GDP ratio was positive and significant. In the long run, capital expenditure-GDP ratio, debt-GDP ratio, and total expenditure-GDP ratio were negative, while tax revenue-GDP ratio and population-GDP ratio were positive but statistically insignificant. The study recommends improved revenue generation and productive debt use for infrastructure.
