Abstract

Despite Nigeria’s abundant fisheries resources, the country is still largely a protein deficient nation. This paper examines the technical efficiency gaps between motorised and non-motorised artisanal fishery enterprises in North Central Nigeria, with a view to identifying gaps that may help optimize the use of available inputs. Multistage sampling technique was employed in selecting 320 respondents for the study. Empirical estimate shows that the mean technical efficiency value for motorised was about 0.78 compared to non-motorised unit with 0.61. This is an indication that on the average, the fishermen were operating technical efficiency of 0.12 and 0.39 below the frontier for the motorised and non-motorised respectively. Technical inefficiency coefficient of fishing experience (-0.499) and adjusted household size (-0.256) in non-motorised unit, and motorised fishermen’s experience, education and credit coefficients (-0.783, -0.856 and -0.693) show that these variables increased technical efficiency. Government policy should be directed at educating the fishing households through skill-enhancing trainings by extension agents to adopt new innovations and techniques which will improve the fishermen’s productivity, sustainable fishery development, standard of living and apparently reduce poverty in the study area.

Key words: Artisanal fishery, differentials, efficiency gaps, technical efficiency