Analytical Framework for Sustainable Supply Chain Management in the Nigerian Petroleum Downstream Sector

This research develops and validates an analytical framework for sustainable supply chain management in the petroleum downstream sector of Nigeria, addressing a recognised gap in the application of sustainability frameworks to Africa's largest oil-consuming market. Petroleum downstream supply chains encompass crude oil refining, product distribution, and retail operations, and their sustainability performance has direct implications for energy security, environmental quality, and socioeconomic welfare across all of Nigeria's geopolitical zones. Drawing on stakeholder theory, resource-based view, and institutional theory as complementary theoretical lenses, this study constructs a multi-dimensional sustainability assessment framework encompassing economic efficiency, environmental impact, social responsibility, and governance dimensions. The framework is validated through expert review involving twenty-three sustainability and supply chain management specialists from industry and academia, using the Delphi method across two validation rounds. Case study application of the framework to four downstream companies operating in the South South, South West, North Central, and North West zones provides preliminary empirical validation of its discriminative capacity and practical utility. Factor analysis of framework component weights reveals that environmental and governance dimensions are currently weighted below their normative importance in practitioners' assessments, suggesting systematic sustainability blind spots. Keywords: sustainable supply chain, petroleum downstream, Delphi method, Nigeria, sustainability framework