Oil Resource Governance, Institutional Quality, and the Resource Curse in Nigeria’s South South States

This dissertation provides an original empirical and theoretical analysis of the oil resource curse in Nigeria's South South geopolitical zone, encompassing Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, and Edo States, arguing that the resource curse is fundamentally a governance and institutional quality problem rather than a macroeconomic inevitability. The dissertation engages critically with Sachs and Warner's original resource curse hypothesis and Karl's Paradox of Plenty, extending both by constructing a state-level institutional quality pathway model that identifies the specific institutional mechanisms through which oil revenues generate under-development. A mixed-methods panel design is employed, combining 25-year longitudinal state-level panel data analysis (1999 to 2023) using system GMM and error correction modelling with comparative case analyses of Bayelsa and Delta States and 55 elite interviews with government officials, oil company executives, EITI monitors, and civil society advocates. The dissertation proposes the Resource-Governance Nexus Theory (RGNT), which specifies how institutional quality, measured by bureaucratic autonomy, rule of law, and civil society oversight, moderates the oil-development relationship. Findings establish that the oil-development paradox is not deterministic but is conditional on governance quality: states with institutional quality scores above the identified threshold significantly outperform predictions of the standard resource curse model. The dissertation makes original theoretical contributions by integrating resource governance theory with sub-national institutional analysis in an African federal context. Keywords: oil resource curse, institutional quality, resource governance, South South Nigeria, petroleum development.