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The mixed empirical findings from the previous studies that examined the impact of oil revenue on economic growth in oil‐rich countries have raised a lot of questions as to why oil revenue has not produced the expected growth effect in some of those countries. One of the factors responsible for such a phenomenon is the poor institutional quality that characterises some of these countries. Given this, this study investigates the role of institutional quality in oil revenue‐economic growth nexus in Nigeria over the period of 1984–2018. Using ARDL as an estimation method, our results show that, irrespective of the choice of oil revenue and economic growth variables, oil revenue is still indispensable to economic growth in the short run and the long run. However, interacting each of the institutional quality variables with real oil revenue and oil rents yields mixed empirical findings. Although some of the interacting variables produce positive effects on economic growth in both runs, the positive effect of some become insignificant and even turn negative in the robustness analysis. With the interaction of overall institutional quality index with oil revenue, oil revenue worsens economic growth in both runs. Given these results, it is suggested that government should improve institutional apparatuses in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]