Institutional Dimensions of Deforestation: Political Economy Analysis of Forest Governance Failures in Nigeria

Nigeria's chronically high deforestation rates persist despite formal institutional frameworks, international conservation commitments, and successive policy reforms, suggesting that conventional explanations centred on poverty and population growth are insufficient and that deeper political economy dynamics must be analysed to explain governance failures. This study develops an original political economy framework for analysing institutional drivers of deforestation in Nigeria, drawing on neo-institutionalist theory, rent-seeking analysis, and comparative historical institutionalism. A multi-level mixed methods design combined analysis of forest sector policy documents from 1976 to 2024, budget tracking of forestry agency allocations across eighteen states, elite interviews with 62 senior forest sector officials and politicians, and panel econometric analysis of state-level deforestation rates against governance quality indicators. The political economy framework identifies four institutional pathology types: elite capture of timber concession rent, vertical fiscal incoherence between federal and state forest agencies, regulatory capture by commercial agricultural interests, and the chronic underfunding of enforcement mandated by clientelist budget allocation. Panel regression analysis confirms statistically significant associations between governance quality indicators and deforestation rates, after controlling for economic and demographic variables. Elite interview data document the specific mechanisms through which timber concession rent is extracted and recycled into political finance in six case study states. The study argues that forest governance reform in Nigeria requires not technical capacity building but structural political economy interventions targeting rent distribution and accountability mechanisms. Keywords: political economy, deforestation, forest governance, institutional analysis, Nigeria