This study investigates the impact of globalization on economic development in Nigeria over the period 1980 to 2024. Specifically, it examines how trade openness, foreign direct investment inflows, official exchange rate, real effective exchange rate, and inflation influence three core measures of economic development   real GDP per capita, life expectancy, and GDP growth rate. The study provides a stylized descriptive account of Nigeria's globalization trajectory across four structurally distinct phases before proceeding to formal econometric analysis. The Augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test, the Johansen cointegration test, and the Ordinary Least Squares regression framework are employed for empirical estimation. The unit root test results indicate that most variables are integrated of order one, I(1), while foreign direct investment is stationary at level, I(0). The Johansen cointegration test confirms the existence of a stable long-run equilibrium relationship between globalization indicators and all three development outcome variables. The OLS regression results reveal that trade openness exerts a positive and statistically significant effect on real GDP per capita, life expectancy, and GDP growth rate across all three model specifications. Foreign direct investment similarly exerts a positive influence on all three outcomes, though with marginal significance in the income and growth equations. Inflation consistently carries a negative sign, while the exchange rate yields mixed results that are sensitive to the structural regime. The study concludes that trade globalization has been a net-positive force for economic development in Nigeria, but that its dividends remain contingent on macroeconomic stability, export diversification, productive FDI attraction, and sustained human capital investment.