Institutional Governance and Policy Gaps in Municipal Solid Waste Management Practice in FCT Abuja

Rapid urbanisation across select African nations has made formal governance structures a critical, yet often under-acknowledged, element to assess the outcomes of planned municipal solid waste management (SWM) systems. Using Abuja, Nigeria's Federal Capital Territory (FCT), as a case study, this paper explores the governance and policy implementation challenges associated with municipal SWM in this region. This study rests on a contemporaneous triangulated mixed-method approach involving field observations, policy document reviews, focus groups with informal sector waste actors, 23 key informant interviews, and the analysis of 689 filled and valid questionnaires. Given the study's focus, the roles and responsibilities, overlaps, and accountability challenges affecting the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB), the Federal Ministry of Environment (FME), the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (NESREA), Area Councils, private contractors, and both formal and informal sector waste actors are explored. A major finding indicates that the waste governance challenges in Abuja are best described as the absence of a policy-practice implementation framework that includes formal operational systems, funding, enforcement, and articulating and measuring accountability. Only 42.3% of surveyed households indicated regular door-to-door waste collection; 26.3% indicated that they practice waste segregation; and 66.4% of the respondents reported a lack of awareness regarding the waste management regulations in Abuja. Insufficient integration of informal sector waste actors, weak data management and poor cost recovery systems, and varying contractor performance, combined with the limited waste management capacity of the Area Councils, were revealed. It is contended that the diffuse multi-actor governance structure of SWM in Abuja presents a major challenge to the performance of the SWM systems within the city. The study advocates for major reforms to include more streamlined multi-actor governance structures, performance management frameworks, and the formalisation of the roles of informal waste sector actors. The article expands the environmental governance literature by illustrating the impact of institutional fragmentation on sustainable waste management in a strategically planned but rapidly growing African capital city.