Developing Nigeria’s human capital is critical especially now that the country is aspiring to be among the 20 leading economies in the world by the year 2020. This study examines the relationship between human capital development and economic growth in Nigeria from 1981 to 2016 using annual time series data. Economic growth proxied by Real gross domestic product (RGDP and primary school enrolment was sourced from World Bank Development Indicators, (2017) while life expectancy (LEX) and adult literacy rate proxy for literacy rate was sourced from Central Bank of Nigeria Annual Report and Statement of Account of various publications. Johansen cointegration test, vector error correction mechanism, Vector Autoregressive (VAR) granger causality test was employed to analyse the data. Johansen cointegration test revealed that, human capital development has a long-run equilibrium relationship with economic growth in Nigeria at 5% level of significance. VAR granger causality test result shows that, economic growth (RGDP), life expectancy (LEX) and primary school enrolment (PSE) granger cause literacy rate (ALR) at 5% level of significant. It is recommended that, relevant policies and programmes such as unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) which are standard welfare programmes for schools should be made in order to increase effectiveness of both literacy rate and primary school enrolment so that they will have positive effect on economic growth.