A Critical Assessment of Port Privatization Policy and Port Productivity in Nigerian Maritime Industry

This paper "A Critical Assessment of Port privatization Policy and Port Productivity in Nigerian maritime Industry" highlights the role of seaports in the socio-economic development of Nigeria; and it further explained port privatization policy which is a globalized concept that involves private sector participation in the operation of the port.The work is aimed at evaluating the productivity of the Nigerian ports since the inception of port privatization policy in Nigeria, and the performance indicators which represents the cargo throughput in Nigeria between 1999 and 2009, which showed that the policy has not been a failure as cargo throughput has increased between 2006 and 2009 than before.Further findings using the Chi-square method of data analysis showed that there is a strong relationship between port privatization policy and port productivity and the revenue generated at the seaports which has increased also, since the inception of port privatization policy in Nigeria.The research findings also showed that, the port privatization policy has been effective in Nigeria but there is still a need for improvement.For this policy to be more effective therefore, there is a need for constant review of this policy from time to time and also the need to make the ports more user friendly by putting in place strategies that will have positive impact in the operation of the port, such as cost reduction strategy and time reduction strategy (which includes time of vessels in berth, and ship turn-round time.Therefore, effort shall be made in this study to review the benefits and challenges of the policy as it relates to ports operational performance and productivity within the confines of the ports-maritime industry at the end of the day.