THE GOVERNANCE–DEVELOPMENT NEXUS IN NIGERIA: A CONCEPTUAL SYNTHESIS OF GOOD GOVERNANCE AND POLICY DISCOURSE THEORIES

Abstract

The debate on the governance-development nexus in Nigeria has been framed mostly within the orthodox good governance paradigm, which has placed institutional quality, accountability, and administrative capacity as the key determinants of developmental outcomes. Although these dimensions are kept in check, these approaches tend to pay insufficient attention to the discursive processes by which governance issues are defined and the reform priorities are legitimised. This paper proposes a synthesised analytical framework connecting the Good Governance Theory to the Policy Discourse Theory to discuss the interaction between institutional performance and reform narratives in defining national development trajectories. The paper offers a critical conceptual review and analytical synthesis and argues that sustainable development is not only dependent on institutional design but also on whether governance discourse is consistent with institutional reality. In the Nigerian context, the discussion shows that a mismatch between the rhetoric of ambitious reforms and the capacity of the administrative system can lead to policy distortions and uneven development outcomes. The paper offers a sophisticated conceptual prism through which the governance-development nexus can be analysed in Nigeria and similar settings, combining institutional and discursive aspects of governance.