An Original Investigation of Property Rights Theory Applied to Cooperative Land Management in South East Nigeria

Property rights theory provides a foundational analytical lens for understanding the governance of common pool resources, including cooperatively managed agricultural land. In South East Nigeria, where customary land tenure systems and cooperative land-use arrangements coexist in complex and often contested ways, property rights theory applied to cooperative land management has not been systematically investigated. This study conducted an original investigation of property rights theory applied to cooperative land management in South East Nigeria, drawing on cases from Enugu, Anambra, and Imo States. A multi-method theoretical and empirical investigation was employed. The theoretical analysis engaged Ostrom's governing-the-commons framework, Demsetz's theory of property rights, and Platteau's institutional evolution theory, identifying their applicability and limitations for Nigerian cooperative land governance. Empirical research involved structured fieldwork at eighteen cooperatives with collective land management arrangements, including participant observation, document analysis of land management agreements, and interviews with 55 cooperative leaders and 30 community title holders and local government officials. Property rights dimensions assessed included resource boundary clarity, exclusion rights, transfer rights, enforcement mechanisms, and collective decision-making rules. Results revealed that effective cooperative land management requires a distinctive hybrid property rights structure combining formal cooperative ownership documentation with customary community consent legitimation, which neither pure property rights theory nor Ostrom's common pool resource framework fully captures. The study proposes an original Cooperative Hybrid Property Rights Model bridging property rights theory and communal land governance for agricultural cooperatives in South East Nigeria.

Keywords: property rights theory, cooperative land management, South East Nigeria, common pool resources, Ostrom's framework