Theoretical Framework for Assessing Social Licence to Operate Dynamics in Nigeria’s Solid Minerals Sector

The concept of social licence to operate (SLO), referring to ongoing community acceptance of mining operations, has been extensively theorised in Western and Australian mining contexts but has not been systematically applied or theoretically adapted to Nigerian cultural, institutional, and political contexts. This dissertation develops an original theoretical framework for assessing SLO dynamics in Nigeria's solid minerals sector, grounded in a critical engagement with existing SLO theory and 24 months of multi-site ethnographic fieldwork across nine mining communities in the South South, South East, North Central, and North West geopolitical zones. The dissertation argues that existing SLO frameworks inadequately account for Nigeria-specific factors including the role of traditional authority structures in legitimacy conferral, the intersection of ethnic identity with community boundary definition, the influence of historical extractive injustice on trust formation, and the state's contested role as a simultaneous regulator and development actor. An original five-dimension Nigerian SLO framework is proposed, incorporating legitimacy, trust, procedural justice, distributional equity, and cultural recognition as distinct measurable constructs. The framework is operationalised through a validated 34-item SLO survey instrument administered to 1,200 community respondents across the nine study sites. Comparative analysis reveals that traditional authority endorsement is the single most powerful predictor of SLO status in Nigerian mining communities, accounting for 38 percent of variance in overall SLO score. The dissertation contributes an original theoretical and measurement contribution to global SLO scholarship. Keywords: social licence to operate, Nigeria, mining communities, theoretical framework, legitimacy.