This study examined the comparative analysis of impact of trade liberalization on employment generation in military and civilian regimes in Nigeria. This was with the goal of comparing how trade liberalization affects employment generation during the military and civilian regimes in Nigeria. Secondary data were used for the study. Annual data from 1980 to 2012 on variables such as employment level, import, export, exchange rate, interest rate and foreign direct investment in Nigeria were

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... from CBN Statistical Bulletin, National Bureau of Statistics (various editions) and World Development Indicator (WDI). Tables, graphs Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and Error Correction Model (ECM) were used for the analysis of the data. Results of the study showed that import intensity at lag 3 showed a significant negative relationship with employment generation (t = -2.380, p <0.05). On the contrary, military rule does not have significant effect on the employment generation (t = -1.0268, p>0.05). However, foreign direct investment increases the employment generation at both lag 1 (t =3.0549, p < 0.005)and lag 2 (t =2.1733,p<0.005). As regards the export intensity, increase in export will induce growth in the employment generation, though judging by its p-value, it is statistically insignificant (t = 1.3935, p > 0.05) but the reverse is the case at lag 2, which shows that export intensity decreases employment generation during the civilian dispensation, as well as military regime (t = -2.9397, p < 0.05) . In addition, interest rate shows negative relationship with employment generation, the lag 3 and lag 4 report that an increase in interest rate will lead to decrease in employment generation, thus, it takes three to four years before interest rate affect the country employment generation (t = -2.4083, p < 0.05). Furthermore, error correction coefficient of -0.8723 is appropriately signed and it is statistically significant (t = -4.4585, p < 0.05). It indicates that about 87.23 percent of disequilibrium will be corrected periodically. It also indicates a mean reverting behavior of the model during civilian dispensation. In conclusion, this study has successfully compared the employment generation during the military and civilian regimes as a result of trade liberalization, and submitted that trade liberalization brings about more employment during civilian rule than during the regime of military rule in Nigeria. 113 www.hrmars.com Evidence from Nigeria. There has been very few empirical works on trade liberalization and employment generation in Nigeria. Ijeoma, (2014) examined the impact of trade liberalization on annual export trade in Nigeria using time series analysis. This result implies that the observed period (Year) was able to explain about 93.8% behavior of annual export in Nigeria. The trend of annual export was found to be steeply increasing from the year 2003 which could be attributed to stability of democracy in Nigeria. It was revealed that there is a strong association between import restriction and export promotion in Nigeria. Umoru (2013), using unit root, co -integration and vector error correction model examined employment and international trade flows in Nigeria. While the long-run coefficients of total trade volume and trade liberalization are negative, the long-run coefficients of real wages, labour market regulation policy and foreign direct investment were positive, reflecting positive long-run effects on employment generation in Nigeria. The study established that employment effect of total international trade volume is significant but negative in Nigeria. Akinlo, Adeleke and Aremo (2013) looked at the effect of trade liberalization on some selected poverty indicators in Nigeria (1980Nigeria ( -2009. The methodology applied was Generalised method of Moments. They observed using the GMM that the four models estimated are wellbehaved in terms of goodness of fit as suggested by high coefficients of determinations and adjusted R-Squared. They found out that trade liberalization does not contribute significantly to the enhancement of labour participation rate in Nigeria. They further concluded that trade liberalization does not seem to contribute positively towards reduction in crude death rate, real per capita expenditure on consumption in Nigeria.. Umoh, Ekpeno and Effiong (2013) offered a sector-specific analysis which focused on the manufacturing sector for meaningful policy insights using autoregressive distributed lag approach to co integration to establish the relationship between openness to trade and manufacturing performance in Nigeria for the period 1970-2008. Results suggest that trade openness has a significant positive impact on manufacturing productivity in Nigeria both in the long and short run. Asongo,Jamala, Joel and Waindu (2013) looked at the impact of trade liberalization on the performance of the manufacturing sector in Nigeria (1989Nigeria ( to 2006 using OLS) method to estimate parameters by conducting multiple and simple regression analysis. The result of the major findings reveals that there is a negative relationship between the interest rate and exchange rate on the manufacturing sector's output. While, there is a positive relationship between domestic credit to private sector and the foreign private investment on the manufacturing output on one hand, and there is a positive relationship between the manufacturing output and the Gross Domestic Product on the other hand. This shows that the manufacturing sector plays a prominent role in the economic development of the country. Onya, Ojimadu and Ogu (2013) enquired into the impact of international trade on poverty and how it affects economic growth in developing countries with particular reference to Nigeria. The analysis was based on (OLS) regression model using data from 1990 -2009.