Digital Governance, E-Government Adoption, and Citizen State Relations in Nigeria: An Institutional Theory and Empirical Contribution

This study generates theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature on digital governance, e-government adoption, and citizen-state relations in Nigeria, examining whether digital transformation of public services is reshaping governance accountability and citizen engagement. Nigeria's National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy and the Federal Government's e-government initiatives represent significant investments in digital governance, yet adoption patterns and impacts on citizen-state relations have not been rigorously theorised from an institutional perspective. Drawing on institutional theory of technology adoption, digital governance frameworks, and recent e-government evaluation literature from 2020 to 2024, the study employs a theory-generating mixed-methods research design. A national digital governance adoption survey is administered to 480 respondents stratified by geopolitical zone, urban-rural location, income, education, and age, measuring e-service adoption patterns, digital trust, governance satisfaction, and citizen participation through digital channels. Structural equation modelling with latent constructs captures complex institutional mediating pathways. Sixty interviews with e-government implementation officers, civil society digital rights advocates, and public administration scholars provide institutional context. The study's theoretical contribution is the Digital Institutional Trust Ladder Model, which conceptualises e-government adoption as conditioned by a hierarchical sequence of institutional preconditions: digital infrastructure adequacy, regulatory trust, procedural transparency, and responsive accountability, each constituting a necessary condition for the next. This model advances diffusion of innovation and institutional trust theory in the digital governance context and generates recommendations for sequencing Nigeria's digital state transformation. Keywords: digital governance, e-government, citizen-state relations, institutional theory, Nigeria