Institutional Voids, Supply Chain Governance, and Market Development in Agricultural Commodity Markets Across Nigeria’s Geopolitical Zones

This dissertation investigates how institutional voids shape supply chain governance mechanisms and influence market development outcomes across agricultural commodity markets in Nigeria's six geopolitical zones. Institutional voids, defined as the absence of market-supporting institutions including reliable contract enforcement, credit information systems, and standardised quality inspection regimes, are theorised as structural constraints that force supply chain actors to develop private governance substitutes. Drawing on institutional economics, transaction cost theory, and the institutional voids framework from international business scholarship, this study constructs an original conceptual model linking void severity, governance adaptation, and commodity market development outcomes. A multi-zone comparative design is employed, combining quantitative surveys of 320 traders, aggregators, and processors across 12 commodity markets spanning all six geopolitical zones, with qualitative case studies at four contrasting market sites. Multilevel mixed-effects regression and comparative case analysis are applied. The dissertation introduces the concept of layered supply chain governance adaptation, an original theoretical contribution proposing that actors construct nested private, collective, and hybrid governance layers in response to multiple simultaneous institutional gaps. Findings are expected to demonstrate significant cross-zonal variation in void severity and governance response patterns, with the North East and North West zones exhibiting the most severe voids and the most complex governance substitutes. Original contributions include a validated institutional void-supply chain governance scale for Nigerian agricultural markets and a zone-level governance typology. Recommendations address federal and state agricultural market reform agencies on targeted institutional infrastructure investments. Keywords: institutional voids, supply chain governance, agricultural markets, Nigeria, geopolitical zones.