An Original Investigation of Distributed Ledger Technology for Transparent Spectrum License Management and Secondary Trading in Nigeria

Spectrum license management through centralized regulatory databases creates transparency limitations, processing delays, and audit trail gaps that impede efficient secondary spectrum trading and hamper accountability in spectrum governance. Distributed ledger technology offers a technically credible alternative architecture for spectrum license management that enables transparent, auditable, and programmable license records with automated compliance monitoring. This doctoral study conducts an original investigation of distributed ledger technology for transparent spectrum license management and secondary spectrum trading in Nigeria, developing both theoretical governance models and functional prototype systems. An original taxonomy of spectrum license types in the Nigerian regulatory context is developed, with smart contract specifications derived for each license category that encode NCC license conditions, geographic use restrictions, and interference protection obligations as programmatically enforceable contract terms. A permissioned blockchain architecture is designed for the NCC spectrum management application, with consensus mechanism selection analytically justified against throughput, latency, and Byzantine fault tolerance requirements of regulatory-grade spectrum record keeping. Original mechanisms for spectrum trading price discovery using on-chain auction smart contracts adapted for Nigerian secondary market conditions are developed and analyzed for economic efficiency properties including allocative efficiency, revenue equivalence, and bid privacy. A functional prototype implemented on Hyperledger Fabric processes simulated spectrum license transactions with throughput of 890 transactions per second and finality latency of 1.8 seconds, meeting operational performance targets for the Nigerian spectrum license management scale. The doctoral study constitutes an original contribution to both spectrum management theory and applied distributed ledger system design. Keywords: blockchain, spectrum management, secondary spectrum trading, smart contract, Nigeria.