The Institutional Economics of Urban Land Markets in Post-Colonial Nigeria: History, Theory, and Reform

This dissertation develops an institutional economics account of urban land market evolution in post-colonial Nigeria, providing a historically grounded theoretical framework that explains the present institutional configuration of Nigerian urban land markets and derives from it principled reform recommendations. Urban land markets are shaped by institutional inheritances that carry the imprint of their historical formation conditions, and Nigerian urban land institutions bear the complex combined legacies of pre-colonial customary governance, colonial administrative structures, and postcolonial state reorganisation, creating a distinctive institutional configuration that conventional models do not explain. The dissertation makes three original contributions: a historical institutional analysis of Nigerian urban land market institution formation from the pre-colonial period to the present, drawing on historical archives, colonial reports, postcolonial policy documents, and secondary historical literature, to identify the path-dependent mechanisms that have produced the current institutional landscape; an original theoretical framework, Layered Institutional Land Market Theory, that models the Nigerian urban land market as a stack of partially overlapping institutional layers, each with its own authority basis, transaction norms, and property rights definition, and theorises how actors navigate and exploit the gaps and contradictions between layers; and an empirically grounded reform analysis using comparative institutional analysis to identify reforms that can improve market performance while respecting the social and political economy constraints that have frustrated previous reform attempts. The empirical component draws on archival research, 80 expert interviews across five cities, and analysis of land administration performance data. Keywords: institutional economics, urban land market, post-colonial, land reform, path dependence.