Containerization plays a crucial role in international trade. It promotes the oceanic business, generally pertinent to container terminals. Despite the various benefits of the container terminal to maritime trade and the economic development of nations with seaports, Nigerian ports are suffering from a progressive decline compared to other thriving ports in other parts of the globe. Hence, this study evaluates the technical efficiency of container terminal operations in southwestern seaport in Nigeria. Survey research design was adopted for this study in which Multi-stage sampling technique was used. Both primary and secondary data were collected from the annual report and questionnaire respectively from staff of the container terminal operators in Tincan Island Port Complex and Apapa Port Complex. The result from the findings showed that four factors influenced container terminal capacity and port performance. These include port charges, stevedoring operations, unserviceable cranes and ship calls. Also, the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) findings showed that AP Moller Terminal, PCHS, and PTML have a crste, vrste, and scale efficiency of 1, indicating they are fully technically efficient under both constant and variable returns to scale. It was concluded that AP Moller Terminal, PCHS and PTML are the most efficient terminal in South-Western Ports in Nigeria. It was recommended that periodic training and retraining of staff handling modern equipment should be prioritized and also, increase in port charges by the terminal operators should be addressed to encourage freight forwarders to clear their cargo on time at the port.
Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Operators, Technical efficiency, container terminal, containerization, seaport
