New Public Governance and the Transformation of Public Administration in Nigerian Megacities

This dissertation develops and empirically tests an original New Public Governance (NPG) model adapted to the governance realities of Nigerian megacities, using Lagos (South West) and Kano (North West) as primary comparative cases and drawing supplementary evidence from Port Harcourt (South South). Existing NPG literature is rooted in European and North American governance contexts that assume mature civil society sectors, functional private sector service delivery markets, and reliable digital infrastructure, none of which are consistently present in Nigerian megacity governance. The dissertation employs a comparative case study design involving 80 elite interviews, 1,200 citizen surveys, 24 months of participant observation in urban service delivery networks, and computational analysis of government tender and contract data from 2019 to 2023. Grounded Theory development, network analysis, and PLS-SEM structural equation modelling jointly provide the methodological architecture. Osborne's NPG Theory, Jessop's Strategic-Relational Approach to State Theory, and Rhodes's Governance Without Government Framework provide the theoretical anchors. The dissertation proposes the Nigerian Urban Governance Network Model (NUGNM), an original mid-range theory of urban governance that identifies network orchestration capacity, hybrid accountability mechanisms, and adaptive service pluralism as the distinctive pillars of effective megacity governance in Nigeria. Findings reveal that Lagos has moved further along the NPG trajectory than Kano, primarily due to a more developed civil society-business governance network, but that both cities remain in hybrid governance states combining elements of Traditional Public Administration, New Public Management, and NPG. Keywords: new public governance, Nigerian megacities, urban governance, Lagos, Kano.