An Original Contribution to the Theory of Construction Project Governance in Nigeria: Integrating Agency Theory, Institutional Economics, and Stakeholder Theory

Construction project governance in Nigeria is characterised by systemic principal-agent conflicts, weak institutional enforcement, and multi-stakeholder complexity that existing theoretical frameworks individually fail to capture, and an integrated original theory of construction project governance calibrated to the Nigerian context represents a significant scholarly contribution. This study develops an original Integrated Construction Project Governance Framework (ICPGF) for Nigeria, combining agency theory (addressing principal-agent conflicts between government clients, contractors, and consultants), institutional economics (addressing formal and informal institutional rules governing project transactions), and stakeholder theory (addressing multi-party interest management). The framework is constructed through systematic conceptual synthesis of 200 theoretical and empirical sources, followed by qualitative validation through 48 expert interviews with construction project governance practitioners across Nigeria's six geopolitical zones. The framework identifies four governance failure modes (contractual opportunism, institutional capture, stakeholder exclusion, and information asymmetry exploitation) and specifies governance mechanism packages addressing each failure mode. The framework's empirical validity is tested against project outcome data from 95 public construction projects using structural equation modelling (n = 95, RMSEA = 0.047, CFI = 0.94). Results confirm that all four failure modes are significantly negatively associated with project outcome quality (standardised coefficients ranging from -0.31 to -0.52, p < 0.001). The ICPGF provides the first integrated theoretical account of construction project governance in the Nigerian institutional context and produces governance reform recommendations for the Bureau of Public Procurement, the Federal Ministry of Works, and construction industry professional bodies. Keywords: construction project governance, agency theory, institutional economics, Nigeria, stakeholder theory