Imachi Nkwu : How Commercialization of Natural Resources Can Create Common Property

Conventional wisdom suggests that, as the value of a natural resource rises, private property will emerge. The Ngwa and other Igbo groups of Nigeria, however, curtailed private rights over palm trees in response to the palm produce trade of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I present a game between property owners and potential thieves in which an increase in the price of a natural resource makes it possible to introduce regulated communal tenure. This makes all parties better off than under private property. I use this model along with colonial court records to explain the political economy of property disputes in interwar Igboland. “Palm cutting always cause palaver.” Obuba of Ububa, Nkwo Udara Civil Suit 111/37