Delivery Readiness for the Sustainable Development Goals: A Tier-Sensitive Administrative Model for Nigeria's Federal System

Nigeria's difficulty in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is often described as a funding or policy-design problem, yet a large share of the gap lies in whether administrative systems are ready to convert commitments into services. This paper develops the Delivery Readiness Model (DRM), a conceptual and measurementoriented extension of the view that public administration is an enabling architecture for the SDGs. The DRM identifies five readiness dimensions (capacity, accountability, digital, inclusion and coordination), assesses them separately at federal, state and local tiers, and links them to five SDG clusters (health, education, gender equality, infrastructure and cities, and peace, justice and institutions). Drawing on an integrative reading of recent Nigerian studies and on wider scholarship in state capacity, accountability, digital-era governance and SDG integration, the paper proposes an Administrative Delivery Readiness Index (ADRI), six testable hypotheses, a mixed-methods research design and a sequenced reform pathway. The paper is conceptual and reports no new primary data. Its contribution is to move from describing governance as important to specifying how readiness can be diagnosed, compared across tiers and tested empirically.