Data as Infrastructure and Adaptive Urban Governance in Nigerian Cities

Research Design

This study uses qualitative research design to examine the use and the organization of urban data systems in planning and project management institutions in Nigerian cities. A qualitative approach is suitable as data infrastructures are socio-technical systems and depend on institutional routines, governance arrangements and professional practices rather than solely technical components.

The study is guided by an interpretive orientation that treats planning institutions as producers and users of knowledge whose activity is created by context, power relations and administrative culture. This approach is widely used in the fields of urban governance and urban planning research, where meaning, interpretation and institutional behaviour cannot be reduced to measurable outputs (Flyvbjerg, 2012; Healey, 2020). It enables the systematic study of how one understands, manages and mobilizes data differently across different governance situations.

Case Study Strategy

A comparative case study approach was adopted with the focus on Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt. Case studies are appropriate for studying urban governance as they provide an opportunity to analyse institutional arrangements, decision-making and an interplay across different levels of authority (Yin, 2018). The comparative design allows identifying shared structural constraints and context-specific variations in data governance.

The three cities were chosen because they reflect contrasting arrangements of governance within a common national framework. Lagos is characterized by a high level of digital ambition and complex institutional landscape developed by partnerships of innovation. Abuja has a system of centralized and technocratic planning with relatively coherent internal data practise. Port Harcourt reflects a governance context shaped by extractive political economies, where key environmental and spatial data is often produced outside municipal institutions. Together, these cases offer a basis for analyzing the impact of various institutional settings on the development and use of urban data infrastructures (Obeng-Odoom, 2016).

The case selection was informed by a maximum variation logic of sampling (Yin, 2018), which was guided by three criteria: (i) governance configuration the three cities represent three different institutional arrangements (metropolitan, federal capital, and resource-economy) that enable comparison across different conditions of urbanization in rapidly urbanizing cities; (ii) documentary availability each of the three cities has an adequate amount of policy documents, urban plans, institutional reports, and Although analytical generalization on the basis of three cases is limited by its nature, the comparative design helps to formulate theoretical propositions that can be challenged and refined in subsequent studies (Yin, 2018). The paper recognizes that the results of Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt might not be representative of the situation in secondary Nigerian cities or peri-urban regions and that additional comparative studies are required to confirm the generalizability of the results to other Global South settings.

Each city is considered as an embedded unit of analysis that is located within national regulatory frameworks, state-level responsibilities and sectoral mandates. This enables the study to understand the impact of national digital strategies and planning policies on data practices at a city level (NITDA, 2023).

Data Sources and Document Analysis

The study is based on document analysis as the main method of data collection. Document analysis is a standard qualitative method for analyzing institutional intentions, governance structures and formal rules which govern administrative action (Bowen, 2009). It is especially suited for analyzing data governance in which policies, plans and official reports specify responsibilities, standards and coordination mechanisms.

The documents reviewed include:

(1) National, state, and local digital governance policies

These sources were chosen to reflect how data is formally situated within planning and project management systems, and how responsibilities for data production, sharing, and use are formulated across institutions.

The selection of documents was based on the criteria of direct relevance to the analytical topics of the study interoperability, data stewardship, transparency, and civic inclusion and the representation of various institutional levels (national, state, municipal) and functional areas (planning, project delivery, digital governance). Systematic searches of government portals, academic databases, and institutional repositories were used to identify documents. In cases of multiple sources within the same area of governance, the most recent and most institutionally authoritative sources were given priority. Admittedly, official documents can reflect aspirational, but not operational realities, and can be biased against informal practices, processes of contest, or the views of marginalized communities. To address this weakness, sources were triangulated among the various types of documents that include policy frameworks, project reports, evaluation studies, and independent academic analyses. Cases of inconsistencies between reported policies and recorded implementation results were also noted. The use of publicly available documents implies that internal administrative data and operational practices may not be properly represented; this is admitted in the Research Gaps section.

Analytical Framework and Coding

Data analysis was performed using a thematic approach that comprised deductive and inductive coding. Deductive codes were developed based on existing literature on data infrastructures, adaptive governance and digital governance, and around themes of interoperability, data stewardship, transparency and institutional learning (e.g., Chaffin et al., 2014; Folke et al., 2005; Purtova & van Maanen, 2024). These themes provided an analytical framework to offer an infrastructural evaluation of urban data systems.

Inductive coding was utilized to capture context specific dynamics that emerged from the documents such as influence of political cycles, administrative turnover, and vendor led digital initiatives. Coding was performed iteratively, and multiple readings were used to refine the categories and identify patterns across cases.

Through this process, three overall analytical categories were developed: institutional arrangements, technical practise and civic engagement with data. These categories organized the comparative process and contributed to the identification of cross-cutting constraints and opportunities affecting adaptive urban governance.

Relational and Institutional Analysis

Given that infrastructures are relational systems, the analysis focused on interactions between institutions, technologies, and decision-making processes. Particular attention was paid to.

(1) Inter-agency coordination and communication pathways

This relational perspective reflects the understanding that data infrastructures are sustained through organizational routines, expectations and cooperative practise, rather than through technology alone (Edwards, 2013; Modgil et al., 2021).

The analysis also took into account wider political-economic factors impacting data visibility and control. In some cities, like Port Harcourt, there has been a history of extractive governance arrangements impacting access and ownership of data on the environment and spatial data which contributes to information gaps in informal and marginalized areas (Onyenechere et al., 2022). For instance, recognizing these influences was crucial to explain the continued fragmentation of certain data infrastructures or their exclusionary nature.

Ethical Considerations

The study is only based on publicly available documents and secondary sources and does not include human participants. Ethical considerations were therefore focused around responsible interpretation, transparency and sensitivity to institutional and political context. No individual officials or organizations were blamed. All sources were properly cited and careful attention was given when presenting the cases to show both constrains and capacities in Nigerian urban governance systems.

Lagos: Digital Ambition Under Fragmented Data Governance

The case of Lagos shows how a lack of institutional coordination around powerful digital ambition can create fragmented data infrastructures, which limit the integration of planning with project management. Policy documents and strategic plans regularly highlight Lagos as a pacesetter in the area of digital innovation, with emphasis on smart city work, platform creation and collaboration with private organizations and universities (Anning-Dorson, 2025; Bello et al., 2024; Soyinka et al., 2016). These initiatives are indicative of the recognition of data as a strategic resource within urban governance.

However, closer examination of the sectoral plans and project documentation shows that most digital systems are constructed inside individual ministries and agencies with different procurement processes, technical vendors and data formats. Data systems for land administration, managing transport, monitoring environment and for social services are operating in large mutual exclusion with limited interoperability. Rather than forming part of a common urban data infrastructure, these systems represent agency specific priorities and short-term project objectives (Adama, 2017; Kitchin, 2014). As an example, the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAGIS) land administration geographic information system and the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA) transport information platform is based on two different technical architectures meaning that a cross-sector spatial analysis cannot take place to aid multi-sector planning decisions.

This fragmentation has direct implications on planning and project management. First, the lack of shared standards and protocols limits the circulation of data across institutions, making it challenging to link planning objectives to project implementation. Second, the reliance on proprietary vendor platforms often binds agencies to closed systems, limiting the ability to both integrate data sets or adjust systems over time (Edwards, 2013). These conditions hinder institutional learning and undermine the continuity of the adaptive governance process (Chaffin et al., 2014; Dawes et al., 2016; Folke et al., 2005).

Transparency initiatives in Lagos are another example of such tensions. While there are several public dashboards and open data portals, the data that gets made available is often limited to high visibility indicators instead of operational datasets that were used to implement routine planning and monitoring of projects. This leads to a distinction between symbolic openness and functional openness. In reality, planners and project managers have limited access to integrated datasets to enable cross-sector analysis, performance tracking or iterative learning (Dawes et al., 2016; Folke et al., 2005).

Coordination challenges are being compounded by the metropolitan governance structure of Lagos. Planning responsibilities are spread between many levels of government and specialized agencies. Although the need for coordination is often acknowledged in policy documents, proposed solutions are often to build new platforms or task forces and not to consolidate existing systems. Data sharing hence depends much on informal networks and personal relations between officials, which hampers institutional memory and continuity at times of changing administrative leadership (Soyinka et al., 2016).

Despite these constraints, Lagos presents some important enabling conditions as well. The existence of innovation agenda, partnerships with academic institutions and the experimentation with geospatial tools and systems to monitor projects are signs of a growing awareness of the role of data in governance (Okonji & Olawale, 2023). These initiatives are potential building blocks for development of a more integrated infrastructure of data, provided that future reforms prioritize common standards, shared stewardship arrangements and clear institutional responsibility for maintaining and governing data systems (Star & Ruhleder, 2010; van der Hoogen et al., 2024) (Table 1).

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Table 1.

Key Characteristics of Urban Data Governance in Lagos

Dimension	Observations
Institutional context	Strong digital ambition; multiple agencies with overlapping mandates
Data infrastructure	Fragmented platforms; weak interoperability; vendor-dependent systems
Planning–project integration	Limited coordination between planning data and project delivery systems
Transparency practices	Public dashboards present; operational data access remains restricted
Adaptive governance capacity	Constrained by weak feedback loops and informal data-sharing arrangements
Opportunities	Standardization of data formats; coordinated data stewardship; integration of project-monitoring tools

Abuja: Technocratic Coherence With Limited Permeability

The case of Abuja shows how technically coherent data systems can co-exist with low levels of institutional openness, which limit adaptive governance, despite a strong internal capacity. Urban planning and infrastructure development of Abuja is structured on a centralized authority with formal geospatial databases and committed technical units for land administration and development control (Nor et al., 2020; World Bank, 2019). Policy and technical documents emphasize professional standards, spatial accuracy and procedural compliance and result in relatively consistent internal data practices.

In infrastructural sense, there is a high level of internal coherence in Abuja. Core datasets are kept in a single institutional context, and geospatial information is regularly utilized to determine land suitability, to enforce master plans and control project approvals. Compared to Lagos, this centralization reduces duplication and helps to increase the level of technical consistency. This coherence is however achieved at the expense of permeability.

The circulation of data in Abuja is mainly vertical. Information usually flows from consultants and technical staff to senior officials, with limited flow of information between different institutions horizontally or outward to citizens (Nor et al., 2020). Public-facing data portals and participatory interfaces remain limited in scope, and there is little evidence of the systematic integration of community-generated data or local knowledge into planning processes. As a result, feedback from implementation and lived experience is rarely reintroduced into decision-making structures in a structured manner, undermining institutional learning (Chaffin et al., 2014; Folke et al., 2005). The Abuja Metropolitan Master Plan update relied largely on technical surveys and consultants’ reports with only limited scope for participatory data gathering from the impacted communities showing how technocratic coherence can fall prey to procedural compliance over adaptive feedback (Abubakar, 2014; Olokesusi et al., 2019).

Project management procedures exemplify this trend even more. Formal guidelines specify sequential phases of initiation, design, procurement and supervision supported by space data to ensure that they align with statutory plans. Evaluation practices, however, are mostly compliance oriented. Monitoring involves focusing on the adherence of predefined plans and technical specifications rather than on adaptive performance indicators or iterative review (Cairney & Toomey, 2024; Flyvbjerg, 2012; Healey, 2020). This limits the ability for projects to respond to conditions, unforeseen impacts or emerging social needs (Flyvbjerg, 2012; Healey, 2020).

Transparency and public trust are among the other challenges. The importance of data protection, privacy, and information use by citizens are recognized in national policies (Chika & Tochukwu, 2020; NITDA, 2023) and yet access to urban data in Abuja is extremely centralized. Limited publication of project by level data, budgets or spatial indicators contributes to perceptions of opacity, even where formal rules are followed. This undermines incentives for citizen participation, and diminishes the possibility of collaborative data practices that foster adaptive governance (Olokesusi et al., 2018).

At the same time, Abuja’s technical capacity is a significant opportunity. The existence of trained geospatial personnel, databases and formalized planning procedures is a good basis for more inclusive and adaptive data governance (Mashi et al., 2025; World Bank, 2019). If institutional reforms were to focus on open data portals, participatory mapping and shared monitoring dashboards, existing systems could be re-orientated to support learning and transparency and coordination in planning and project management. The Abuja case therefore brings out the fact that technical capability alone is not enough; governance arrangements concerning the movement of data between institutions and society are decisive (Table 2).

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Table 2.

Key Characteristics of Urban Data Governance in Abuja

Dimension	Observations
Institutional context	Centralized planning authority; formal development-control systems
Data infrastructure	Coherent internal geospatial databases; strong technical capacity
Planning–project integration	High alignment with master plans; limited adaptive feedback
Transparency practices	Centralized access; limited public-facing data
Adaptive governance capacity	Constrained by vertical data flows and weak learning mechanisms
Opportunities	Open portals; participatory mapping; iterative monitoring tools

Port Harcourt: Extractive Governance and Informational Blind Spots

The Port Harcourt case points to the socio-political economic relationships of extractive domains and the consequent visibility, coordination and adaptive governance of urban data infrastructures. Planning authorities work within a context in which critical information on key environmental and spatial data, specifically related to land use, pollution and infrastructure, is often developed and owned by private actors in the oil and gas industry rather than by the municipal institutions (Echendu, 2021; World Bank, 2019). As a result, massive amounts of potentially relevant data are still outside of public planning systems.

Policy documents and project reports suggest that there are fragmented mandates and overlapping responsibilities between municipal, state, and federal institutions. Coordination issues, jurisdictional disputes, and resource constraints are reoccurring themes, indicating a lack of a stable institutional structure for data governance (Unegbu et al., 2024). Where planning authorities have no continuous access to environmental and social data, they rely on periodic studies or externally-funded surveys, which is challenging to update and rarely combined into ongoing data infrastructures; (Bernardo et al., 2024; Edwards, 2013). These conditions are indicative not just of technical inability but of more profound deficiencies of governance capacity due to decades of extractive political economy that has made institutional focus and resource allocation work towards hydrocarbon income instead of integrating municipal data systems.

Due to these institutional conditions, there are large information blind spots, especially in informal settlements and peri-urban areas. Secondary sources and planning documents reveal that many of the waterfronts and low-lying communities that are important to the social and economic life of the cities are not well represented in official maps and their datasets (Satterthwaite et al., 2020). An analysis of the development corridors of Greater Port Harcourt City revealed that about 40% of the built-up space in the waterfront neighbourhoods were not registered in municipal GIS databases (Onwuzuligbo et al., 2023), which is a representation of the level of informational exclusion caused by a breakdown in governance. Lack of systematic data on population density and housing conditions, and exposure to environmental risks, limits the ability of planners and project managers to prioritize interventions or assess the impact of projects. Consequently, infrastructure projects end up preferring formally recognized neighborhoods where data are more available and political risk lessened.

At the same time, civic and academic processes have arisen to address these gaps. Participatory mapping exercises conducted by civil society organizations and research institutions have produced rich spatial information on the location of informal settlements, local assets and environmental risks (Americo et al., 2024). These initiatives show the potential of community-generated data to improve the knowledge of cities and enable more inclusive planning. Institutional mechanisms for including such information in official planning and project management processes are, however, still weak. Community generated datasets tend to circulate outside the formal structures of decision-making and outside recognized status in municipal systems, which limits influencing decision making processes on project selection and design (Flyvbjerg, 2012; Healey, 2020).

The Port Harcourt case highlights the need for regulatory frameworks around data sharing. In the absence of clear legal obligations that force private operators to share anonymize environmental and infrastructural data with public authorities, information is still concentrated within corporate systems. This concentration reinforces power asymmetries and raises questions of equity especially where environmental harms disproportionately fall on marginalized communities (Purtova & van Maanen, 2024). Data infrastructure, in this context, is more of a private asset which limits adaptive governance (Cinnamon, 2019; Janssen & Kuk, 2016) (Table 3).

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Table 3.

Key Characteristics of Urban Data Governance in Port Harcourt

Dimension	Observations
Institutional context	Fragmented mandates; strong influence of extractive industries
Data infrastructure	Corporate control of key datasets; weak municipal integration
Planning–project integration	Limited due to data gaps and discontinuous information
Transparency practices	Restricted access to environmental and spatial data
Adaptive governance capacity	Constrained by informational blind spots and weak feedback
Opportunities	Legal reforms for data sharing; integration of civic-generated data

Cross-Cutting Patterns: Fragmentation, Stewardship, and Inclusion

Comparative analysis of Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt reveals three interrelated patterns shown by how urban data as infrastructure for planning and project management can be described as fragmented institutional political control, weak data stewardship, and limited civic inclusion. Although these patterns are manifested in different ways in different cities, it has similar governance outcomes through constraints on coordination, learning, and adaptation. Collectively, they show that the major obstacles to adaptive urban governance are institutional rather than technical in nature.

Weak Data Stewardship and Institutional Continuity

A second recurring theme is poor data stewardship. Across the three cities, responsibility for maintenance, upkeep, and governance of datasets tends to be ambiguous, inconsistently managed, and project-specific. Even where technical units exist, they often do not have the authority, stable funding or cross-sector mandate to enforce standards or guarantee continuity.

In cumulative effect is this weakness. Digital initiatives are frequently implemented as isolated projects without explicit integration into existing data constructions. Over time, this leads to the creation of parallel systems, redundant datasets, and tools which become obsolete when funding or political support runs out. Similar dynamics have been noted where digitalisation is progressing at a faster pace than institutional capacity (Chika & Tochukwu, 2020; World Bank, 2019).

From an infrastructural perspective, stewardship is of key importance because infrastructures rely on the maintenance of capital over time more so than the one-off investments. The Nigerian cases show that without clearly defined arrangements for stewardship, data infrastructures are vulnerable to political changes, administrative restructuring and vendor lock-in. These conditions contribute to the loss of institutional memory and the ability of planning and project management systems to learn from their interventions in the past (Table 4).

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Table 4.

Data Stewardship Characteristics Across Cases

Dimension	Lagos	Abuja	Port Harcourt
Stewardship authority	Fragmented across agencies	Centralized but inward-facing	Weak and externally dependent
Continuity mechanisms	Informal and person-dependent	Procedural but rigid	Project-based and discontinuous
Vulnerability	Vendor lock-in	Limited learning	Data hoarding

Converging Implications for Adaptive Governance

Although Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt differ in terms of political economy and institutional capacity, the convergence of fragmentation, weak stewardship and a lack of inclusion point to a similar governance challenge. Adaptive urban governance requires data infrastructures, which are integrated across institutions and sustained over time, and open to various forms of knowledge. Where these conditions are not met, governance systems are still reactive, compliance-oriented and woefully unable to manage rapid urban change.

The comparative evidence indicates that better urban data governance needs more than technical improvements. It requires institutional reforms to give clarity of stewardship responsibilities, better alignment of planning and project management routines, and recognizes data as a shared civic resource and not a proprietary or purely administrative asset. These insights are transferable to other rapidly urbanizing cities in which digital initiatives proliferate in the absence of coherent data governance frameworks (Table 5).

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Table 5.

Mapping of Analytical Codes, Themes, Empirical Findings, and Conceptual Figures

Coding level	Code/Category	Analytical theme (results–Discussion headings)	Comparative empirical findings (Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt)
Deductive	Interoperability	Interoperability: Institutional fragmentation and data circulation	Lagos exhibits horizontal fragmentation across agencies and vendor-led platforms; Abuja shows internal coherence but limited permeability across governance layers; Port Harcourt is characterized by sectoral disconnection between municipal and corporate datasets. In all cases, weak data circulation constrains coordination between planning and project management.
Inductive	Vendor-led digital initiatives	(Nested under interoperability)	Procurement practices and proprietary platforms reinforce siloed systems in Lagos and constrain system adaptability across cases.
Inductive	Jurisdictional and sectoral boundaries	(Nested under interoperability)	Centralized authority in Abuja and extractive-sector dominance in Port Harcourt restrict cross-institutional data exchange.
Deductive	Data stewardship	Data stewardship: Continuity, ownership, and governance over time	Lagos relies on project-based stewardship vulnerable to political turnover; Abuja maintains stable but rigid stewardship arrangements; Port Harcourt depends on episodic and external data production. Across cases, weak stewardship undermines continuity and institutional memory.
Inductive	Political cycles	(Nested under data stewardship)	Short political horizons disrupt maintenance and consolidation of data systems, particularly in Lagos and Port Harcourt.
Inductive	Administrative turnover	(Nested under data stewardship)	Loss of institutional memory and reliance on informal networks weaken long-term learning across cases.
Deductive	Transparency	Transparency: Civic inclusion and data visibility	Lagos emphasises symbolic openness through dashboards; Abuja restricts access through technocratic control; Port Harcourt faces corporate data hoarding. Transparency remains selective and uneven, privileging formally planned areas.
Inductive	Technocratic control	(Nested under transparency)	Procedural opacity limits civic feedback in Abuja and constrains participatory governance.
Inductive	Corporate data control	(Nested under transparency)	Extractive-sector dominance in Port Harcourt produces informational blind spots, especially in informal and environmentally vulnerable areas.
Deductive	Institutional learning	Institutional learning: Feedback, evaluation, and adaptation	Fragmented systems in Lagos, compliance-oriented monitoring in Abuja, and data gaps in Port Harcourt weaken feedback loops. Across cases, governance remains reactive rather than adaptive.
Inductive	Compliance-oriented monitoring	(Nested under institutional learning)	Emphasis on procedural adherence limits iterative learning and adaptation, particularly in Abuja.
Inductive	Weak feedback loops	(Nested under institutional learning)	Disconnection between planning, implementation, and evaluation persists across all three cities.

Data Infrastructure as a Socio-Technical Governance Challenge

One of the key contributions of the present research is that breaches of city data governance are not technological, but rather soci-technological and institutional. As indicated in the three cases, the high technical aptitude as the Abuja present case of geospatial databases fails to produce adaptive governance results in instances where institutional structures of sharing data, receiving feedback, and civic inclusion are still underdeveloped. Instead, even the high degrees of civic experimentation such as in certain community mapping projects in Port Harcourt are not enough to increase the desired results of planning without any form of formal integration. This result confirms the socio-technical systems view, which reiterates that technology is effectively infrastructure only through facilitating institutional and social configurations (Agboola & Tunay, 2023; Edwards, 2013; Star & Ruhleder, 2010).

The implications of this view on the theorisation and pursuit of digital transformation of urban governance are significant. Agboola et al. (2026) show that the adaptive urban service structures in the rapidly urbanizing cities have to be sustainable by combining the smart technologies with the responsive institution structures. This applies to the Nigerian context where digitalization initiatives have been traditionally catalyzed by donor programme, vendor-priced acquisition, and sporadic political time-frames which implies that technical infrastructure investments are not enough. Systems of governance where stewardship functions, interoperability, and civil participation systems are clearly defined are also essential to attaining adaptive results (Agboola & Nia, 2025).

Towards Transferable Governance Mechanisms

Based on the cross-case analysis, three transferable governance mechanisms arise pertinent to the urbanization that is fast and cities in the Global South. First, instruments of shared data stewardship formalize agreements defining the roles in data maintenance, quality assurance, and sharing across agencies as a basis of infrastructure sustainability. The comparative evidence indicates that in absence of such arrangements, digital acts are still ad hoc and are prone to disruption by politics and government. Second, common data standards, open application programming interfaces, and shared technical architectures are needed, so that data flow across institutional borders is enabled without necessarily centralizing the whole system. Third, effective mechanisms of civic data integration formalize the processes by which community generated data, participatory mapping, and local knowledge become part of the planning process so that adaptive governance systems respond to various and rapidly evolving urban situations.

These forms of governance are not new to the literature but the kind of interdependence that they have with each other, as evidenced by the Nigerian cases, is novel. The lack of stewardship in interoperability results in the creation of institutionally ungovernable systems of technical compatibility. Civic inclusion creates coherent but closed data regimes when stewardship is practiced. And interoperability with civic inclusion provides abundant of individual data sets that cannot guide scaled planning. The combination of these three mechanisms to create effective adaptive governance is a lesson that has a wide applicability to similar contexts in urban governance.

Urban Data Governance as Part of Broader Socio-Technical Transitions

The results of this research can be profitably explained within the context of more general socio-technological changes in urban areas. The useful conceptual reference in this case refers to the calm mobility paradigm, which is created in the adoption of sustainable urban mobility transitions. Sustainable urban change is enabled by predictable, inclusive, and well-coordinated governance structures that minimize institutional volatility and allow long-term learning as theorized by recent work on urban mobility transitions to move beyond policy uncertainty and prominence towards the calm mobility paradigm (Süle et al., 2026; Turoń, 2025). When applied to the data governance situation, this framework implies that not only does the move towards adaptive urban governance need technical enhancements but that establishment of stable, trustful, and participatory data-oriented institutions is needed, which we could refer to as a calmer form of data governance orientation that prioritizes reliability, inclusiveness, and institutional learning, rather than turbulent cycles of politically-inspired digital projects.

This framing helps relate the results of the study to general discussion of institutional reliability and citizen trust in urban governance. According to Healey (2020) an absence of trust in administrative transparency and fairness prevents collaborative planning because citizens are not confident in the impartiality of administrative systems. The lack of transparency in data availability in all three cases in Nigeria, be it the symbolic dashboard systems in Lagos, the technocratic governance in Abuja, or the hoarding of corporate information in Port Harcourt, undermines the civic trust that adaptive governance relies on. The development of more open, accountable, and participative data infrastructures is thus not merely a technical or institutional challenge but a political one, which entails the selective redistribution of information power to citizens and communities.

Implications for the Global South

Though, the area of the study is Nigerian cities, the patterns found are generalized to urbanizing rapidly cities in sub-Saharan Africa and Global South in general. The numerous cities in this group experience similarities in governance fragmentation, digitization outpacing institutional capability, and civic marginalization in data practices (Chirisa et al., 2024; Obeng-Odoom, 2016). These findings indicate that generic smart city models, which are popularly formulated and suited to contexts with high institutional capacity and effective legal structures, need to be modified considerably to suit cities where informal governance, extractive political economies and poor interoperability are structural factors and not transitional issues.

To the urban planners and the project managers of the public-sector in such settings, the most important learning is that even governance of the data is a kind of governance infrastructure, which must be approached with as much mindful care and investment as tangible infrastructure. Pilot projects to prove the value of shared stewardship, civic data integration and open interoperability standards can be better access points to reform than any digital transformation programmes that are both faster than institutional capacity and civic trust (Peter, 2021).

Research Gaps and Further Studies

The research is limited in its reliance on document-based analysis and these limits understanding of how urban data infrastructures are enacted in day-to-day planning and project management practices. Future studies could include interviews, observation or mixed methods which could explore how data is interpreted, negotiated and operationalized by practitioners outside formal policy frameworks.

Although fragmentation, weak data stewardship and limited civic inclusion are identified as some of the key constraints on adaptive governance, their implications are not empirically measured. Further studies could consider how changes in data integration and governance arrangements relate to the project delivery, institutional learning and service outcomes over time.

The focus on Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt also limits the inferences. Comparative research, with either secondary cities or peri-urban areas or cities in different Sub-Saharan African contexts, would aid in determining whether these patterns are indicative of some broader structural conditions or context-specific dynamics.

Further research is required on the role of private vendors and actors in the extractive sector on urban data infrastructures, especially around data ownership, interoperability and accountability. Empirical examination of institutional experiments such as shared data stewardship frameworks or the formal integration of community-generated data would contribute towards a further understanding of how data infrastructures can help promote adaptive and inclusive urban governance.