Towards a Theory of Environmental Management Failure in Post-Colonial States: Evidence and Implications from Nigeria

This dissertation develops an original theory of environmental management failure in post-colonial states, grounded in empirical evidence from Nigeria across multiple environmental governance domains. The dominant explanations for environmental management failure in developing countries centre on capacity deficits, corruption, and inadequate regulatory frameworks, but these explanations are insufficiently theorised and do not adequately account for the persistence of failure despite decades of institutional reform, foreign assistance, and capacity building. The theoretical contribution challenges these capacity-centred explanations by arguing that environmental management failure in post-colonial states like Nigeria is constitutive of deeper structural conditions, including the legacy of colonial natural resource extraction logics that continue to shape institutional priorities, the political economy of short-term resource exploitation that systematically outcompetes long-term environmental stewardship interests, and the fragmentation of sovereignty over natural resources between formal state institutions and a range of informal authorities. The theory is developed through a systematic comparative analysis of environmental management failure patterns across five domains: oil spill management in the Niger Delta, deforestation governance in southern Nigeria, protected area management, urban waste management, and soil conservation in the north. Evidence is drawn from twelve years of secondary data supplemented by primary fieldwork interviews with 75 environmental managers, regulators, community leaders, and civil society actors. Original theoretical concepts introduced include the extraction logic trap, the sovereignty fragmentation problem, and the reform-failure cycle. The dissertation generates seven theoretical propositions and derives their implications for environmental management reform strategy in post-colonial state contexts. Keywords: environmental management failure, post-colonial, institutional theory, Nigeria, governance.