ASSESSMENT OF OPERATIONAL CAPACITY OF CONCESSIONAIRES IN APAPA PORT

Abstract

An overview of Lagos Port Complex (LPC) comparing the terminal operators to establish the operational characteristics of the LPC alongside with infrastructural capacity (opinion based of the following parameters; Port Capacity Utilization, Adequacy of Storage Facilities, Berth Capacity Exertion, Modern Handling Technique etc.) and challenges facing maritime transport in Nigeria. The research work involved collection of primary data from respondents through a structured questionnaire. Lagos was selected as the study area and LPC among the ports in Lagos was selected for the study because the port is a general port and not a specialized port which handles substantial share of cargo in and out of Nigeria. The respondents consist of the LPC workforce; both the officer and staffs. Data collected took grasp of variable such as volume of ships registration in Nigeria and port characteristics such as waiting time, turnaround time, ship traffic, etc. from year 2007 to year 2016 to reflect the historical pattern in the port operations and the ship registration in Nigeria. The inferential analysis involved the time series (classical multiplication model and least square method) and some non-parametric test such as Mann-whitney U test. The findings show that APMT among other terminal operators had the best performance criteria, except for the case of their berth occupancy that witness 0.9 percent drop. They had witness progressive increase in other forms of performance characteristics such as ship traffic volume, GRT, ship waiting time, and turnaround time. All of the other terminal operators had consciously worked on their average ship waiting time and the average ship turnaround time. ENL berth occupancy rate shows a retrogressive slope of about 11.7 percent. Analysis shows that port infrastructure has moderate effect on “Adequacy of Storage Facility”, “Policy Oriented Traffic”, “Obsolete Handling Equipment” and “Level of Workforce Competence” with a statistical difference between their ranked mean respectively. Some pertinent challenges facing seaborne cargo operations were ascertained based on NPA’s workforce opinion. They opined that Nigeria seaborne cargo operation is facing high dominance of foreign vessels, ships sailing back on ballast, foreign vessels berthing in LPC and it cost more to import to Nigeria ports in West Africa. And the hypothesis test established that there is significant difference between port infrastructural capacity, security level and foreigners manning Nigerian owned vessels.