An Original Institutional Analysis of the Role of Cooperative Societies in Nigeria’s Agricultural Transformation Agenda

Nigeria's Agricultural Transformation Agenda and its successor policies position cooperative societies as key institutional vehicles for commercialising smallholder agriculture, yet the institutional mechanisms through which cooperatives can effectively contribute to agricultural transformation remain theoretically underspecified and empirically under-examined at the institutional level. This study conducted an original institutional analysis of the role of cooperative societies in Nigeria's agricultural transformation agenda. A new institutional economics framework was combined with political economy analysis and multi-case empirical research. The institutional analysis employed North's institutional framework, Williamson's transaction cost economics, and Ostrom's governing-the-commons principles to theorise the role of cooperative institutions in agricultural market transformation across five dimensions: transaction cost reduction, collective action facilitation, market coordination, input supply chain organisation, and state-market intermediation. Political economy analysis documented the policy environment, implementation challenges, and institutional complementarities or conflicts between cooperative societies and other agricultural transformation instruments, drawing on policy document analysis and interviews with 25 agricultural transformation policymakers, cooperative federation officials, and agricultural economists. Multi-case empirical research examined twelve cooperatives in the cassava, rice, and maize value chains across the North Central, South East, and South West zones that had participated in transformation programme activities, using process tracing to document institutional mechanisms and outcome pathways. The study generates an original Cooperative Transformation Intermediation Model specifying the institutional conditions under which cooperative societies can function as effective agricultural transformation intermediaries in the Nigerian context, constituting a contribution to new institutional economics and agricultural development theory.

Keywords: institutional analysis, agricultural transformation, cooperative societies, Nigeria, new institutional economics