This study examined the level of indigenous participation in shipping-related businesses in Onne Sea Port, Port Harcourt, owing to the implementation of the Cabotage Law. A Principal component analysis (PCA) was conducted on 67 items from 450 questionnaires administered with a success rate of 89.3 using orthogonal rotation. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure verified the sampling adequacy for the analysis, KMO = .771, and all KMO values for individual items were greater than .51, which is slightly above the acceptable limit of .5. Bartlett’s test of sphericity χ² (2211) = 2.480, p < .001, indicated that correlations between items were sufficiently large for PCA. An initial analysis was carried out to obtain eigenvalues for each component in the data. Seventeen components had eigenvalues over Kaiser’s criterion of 1 and in combination explained 75.65 per cent of the variance. Various levels of impact of the Cabotage law on SMEs and indigenous ship building technology has been examined. Multiple regression analysis confirmed that Cabotage regime has significant impact on the number of indigenous vessels through a combined effect of six variables (R² = 0.05, F(6, 395) = 4.501, p < .005). The study recommended human capital development as a vital and indispensable element of Cabotage Law implementation in Nigeria.
Keywords: Cabotage Law, Capacity building, Indigenous Participation, Maritime Industry., Shipping Industry
