An Integrated Framework for Geohazard Risk Governance in Nigerian Urban Centres: Theory, Application, and Policy Implications

Urban geohazard risk governance in Nigeria lacks an integrated theoretical framework that effectively bridges the scientific characterisation of subsurface hazards with policy implementation, institutional coordination, and community participation, resulting in inadequate and fragmented risk reduction outcomes in rapidly growing cities. This study develops and empirically tests an integrated framework for geohazard risk governance in Nigerian urban centres, applying it through comparative case studies in Lagos, Kano, and Enugu, where flooding and subsidence, sand dune encroachment, and gully erosion respectively represent dominant hazard types. A conceptual governance framework is constructed through synthesis of international disaster risk reduction literature, institutional analysis theory, and participatory risk assessment methodologies, adapted to the Nigerian constitutional and regulatory context. Each city case study applies the framework through mixed-methods research combining geological hazard mapping, multi-stakeholder institutional network analysis, household vulnerability surveys, and comparative policy analysis of land use planning instruments. The study identifies critical governance failures including inadequate hazard data mainstreaming in urban planning, insufficient vertical coordination between federal, state, and local agencies, and exclusion of community geological knowledge from formal risk assessments. An original reform agenda addressing each identified failure mode is developed and submitted to the National Emergency Management Agency. The study makes an original theoretical contribution by extending risk governance theory to the geological domain in low and middle-income country contexts. Keywords: geohazard governance, urban risk, institutional analysis, Nigeria, disaster risk reduction.