PORTS COMPETITION AND CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IN THE NIGERIAN PORTS AUTHORITY

Abstract

Nigeria ports had been perceived as one of the most inefficient ports in the world as they were characterised by long turnaround time (14days) as against the (48hours) of international standard obtainable in most Asian and European ports leading to extreme customer dissatisfaction. These could be partly traced to problems of obsolete infrastructures and superstructures, bloated workforce and excessive port charges. In order to allay these problems, government decided to introduce market induced ports competition. This study therefore examined whether or not the introduction of ports competition into the operations of Nigeria Ports Authority has facilitated significant improvement in customer satisfaction in its activities. A 5-point Likert scale questionnaire was designed in collecting primary data from a sample of Nigerian Port Authority’s customers viz the Head of operations of Shipping lines and freight forwarders who conduct their activities in Apapa ports. The formulated hypotheses in line with the research questions were tested using multiple regression analysis, with the aid of SPSS. The findings revealed that port competition has significant effect on the performance of Nigeria ports Authority. The study concluded that port competition strategy has a significant effect on customer satisfaction in Nigeria Ports Authority and is therefore significantly relevant in predicting how happy/satisfied customers of NPA could become. It is recommended that NPA should further encourage and institutionalise port competition within port and between ports to further stimulate improved Customer satisfaction.