The research delved into the impact of subsidy entrepreneurship on the economic development within Nigeria throughout the span from 2012 to 2021, utilizing annual time series data. The evaluation of stationarity was conducted through the Augmented Dickey Fuller test, while the estimation of parameters was undertaken using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) methodology. The findings unveiled a persistent and long term relationship among the variables. The test outcomes reveal that all the variables exhibit stationarity upon initial differencing, surpassing the 5% level of significance. The results show an increase in fiscal deficit as a proxy for subsidy entrepreneurship leads to a decrease in economic development. The result also pointed out an increase in gross national income leads to an increase in economic development. The results have obvious policy implications for Nigeria. Nigeria must do away with subsidy entrepreneurs, who are corruptly enriched through fiscal deficit and responsible for the infrastructural gap and fueling the poor human development index in Nigeria.

Keywords: Subsidy entrepreneurship; Economic Development; Human Development Indicator; Fiscal Deficit;