LOCATOINAL ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ACCESSIBILITY AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES – A CASE STUDY OF ASABA

• Atubi, A. O.

ABSTRACT

Accessibility is a factor though not the determinant in defining a process of spatial organization of man c functional establishment. A case study relating road network with the pattern of manufacturing industries for selected areas in Asaba, 2003 reveals a weak relationship between accessibility and manufacturing industries. Graph theory approach was used to derive two types of accessibility measures. The first from connectivity matrix accessibility and the second from using valued graph. Simple correlation coefficients revealed weak correlation of 0.09 between accessibility and industries. Again a weak correlation coefficient of -0.05 was found between population potential and umber of industries. This weak relationship however, improved when multiple linear correlation analysis was applied and a fairly high result of 0.40 was achieved. Although high correlation values were got in the multiple linear correlation analysis, the weak values from simple correlation analysis indicates that aside from being a good surrogate of transport efficiency, accessibility is also a poor measure of the relative advantage of a given place in attracting to itself the centralization and specialization of human activities in Asaba, Delta State. Based on the findings, recommendations were proffered as this will bring about changes in the urban pattern leading to increase in the number of industries in a process of spatial re-organization.

Keywords:Locational Analysis; Accessibility; Distribution; Manufacturing; Industries.

INTRODUCTION

Accessibility is an important geographical concept associated with relative location. Accessibility is not simply distance but involves time cost and effort used in travelling. Accessibility has been defined as the relative degree of ease with which a location is reached from other locations of ones home relative to other features of the wider physical environment is very important. The organization of every region is reflected in the transportation network (Atubi and Onokala, 2004a; Atubi and Onokala, 2004b). This there is a clear relationship between transportation and economic activities. Such economic activities like the location of industries have been the concern of scholars’ in recent times. It has even been more crucial in developing countries such as Nigeria where much is expected from these industries to augment the low output from agriculture. This concern is justified because the crucial choice of a suitable location may spell the differences between successes and failure (Hover, 1948). In recognition of this fact the process of localization of industries generally reflect a tendency to optimize place utility and maximize profit. However, real life experience has shown that this is not always the case. The interesting thing about industrial distribution is that industries tend to be concentrated in few urban centers. The concentration may be explained in terms of their possessing much of the market, raw materials, the best transport links and considerable labour force Nwafor, 1982, Atubi and Ugbomch, 2002). Usually, industrializations have well connected road network. In Nigeria for instance, over 95% of industrial establishments are found in urban centers which are also related to the countries rail and road system (Onyemelukwe, 1978). It has been observed that the distribution of manufacturing industries in all urban centers in Nigeria is uneven, despite the Federal Government policy of industrialization “promotion of nation wide industrial development through industrial dispersal” (Industrial Policy of Nigeria, 1988). The relationship between transportation and regional development has engaged the attention of geographers over the years. The area at has attracted considerable attention is the use of graph theory. Graph theoretic measures have been used to determine the structural and geometrical properties of highway, rail and air networks. Also the relationship between network geometry and regional characteristics have been explored (Kansky, 1963, Kanaa, 1965) and a number of works have focused upon the problem of deriving effective measures of connectivity for urban nodes on the system (Garrison and Marble, 1964; Monanu and Hodgson, 1976; Atubi and Onokala, 2004a and b). On the other hand, Bardi, applying indices of accessibility in urban e:ers of former Bendel State of Nigeria finds that population concentration is not necessarily related to accessibility (Bardi, 1982). Contrary to this view, Gautheir accepted that a changing pattern of accessibility means change in incidence of growth of a center (Guatheir, 1970). Also Atubi and Onokala (2004a), in tracing the changing accessibility patterns of cnter in Lagos Island from 1976-1997 noted that a center gets more accessibility as the road network gets more connected. Locational theorists of classic time, in isolating the influence of transportation location choice, neither though of cost as not connected with money nor used graph theoretic approach in their study. In Nigeria, vast amount of researches have also been carried out on industrial location by various scholars. Vagale historically related traffic flow and transportation to industrialization in Nigeria (Vagale, 1971). Also, Onyemelukwe in his study of structural and locational characteristics of manufacturing industries in Nigeria analyzed the impact of transport on urbanization and industrialization (Onyemelukwe, 1978). Taffee et al, (1963) clearly implied the effect of transportation on industrial development using Ghana and Nigeria for illustration in their idealized process of transport development, they noted that transport development at a stage will lead to increased specialization and an expansion of market area of urban centers. Onokerhoraye (1981) also, examined the importance of transportation network in improving the accessibility of people living in various parts of Nigeria to essential public facilities/services like education, health services etc. He argued that since a lare proportion of the population of Nigeria are in rural areas (70%) thereby making it impossible for the attainment of the threshold required to support certain public facilities. There is therefore the need to improve the transportation network between where they are located with improved transport facilities, the accessibility of most people living in the rural areas of the country to the available public services will be increased while the proportion of those deprived of the use of such facilities will be considerably reduced. However, Olagbaiye using population potential model analyzed manufacturing location in southern Nigeria, he observed Asaba – Onitsha which were the highest peaks of population potential support one of tenants of location theory that a central location theory that a central location in a region maximizes accessibility to the market in that region (Olagbaiye, 1968). In delimiting the nodes to be considered, he used one or more of the following considerations political or administrative status, centrality of location, population size and commercial importance.

STUDY AREA

Asaba is a town situated in the Guinea savannah belt of Nigeria and is located on longitude 6o45E and latitude 6o3’N. It is situated along the bank of River Niger, and is the Headquarters of Oshimili South Local Government area (see fig. 1) of Delta State. Asaba is passed through by the federal highway, which, at the Niger is linked by a bridge with Onitsha in Anambra State. The town, Asaba which is the seat of government, has been in existence long before it was made the Headquarter of Delta State. it is a commercialized and industrialized town, and it shares common boundary with Okpanam and Ugobu in the North, Oko and Ibusa in the west, while the Niger washes the eastern and south eastern fringes of the town. The population of Asaba has rapidly increased since the creation of Delta State when it was made the headquarters and since then the rate of industrialization and urbanization is fast increasing. According to the federal office of statistics, the present population is estimated to be about 81,768 people.

MATERIALS AND METHOD OF ANALYSIS

The accessibility indices from centers considered was derived from two methods. The first involved matrix multiplication of the connectivity matrix. The second involved the matrix multiplication of the distance matrix. Gamma and alpha indices was also used. The formula are written in the following form.

Where e is Number is edges

v is number of vertices

The relationship between accessibility indices of manufacturing industries and the number of good roads and value of market potential is established by the Spearman’s rank correlation co-efficient. This is issued to test if the variation in one independent variable affects the variation in the second dependent variable. Also the multiple correlation is used to determine the degree of the relationship between all the variables. This is expressed by

Where R = Multiple correlation

1.23 = Correlation between variables 1, 2 and 3

r= variable correlation

r12= Correlation between I and 2

r13= 1 and3

r23 = 2and3

DISCUSSION OF RESULTS/FINDINGS

For convenience the accessibility’ indices gotten from the connectivity matrix (Accessibility Matrix T) will be called Accessibility I while the shortest distance matrix will be called accessibility 2. (See Appendix I and 2). The relationship between accessibility and the number of manufacturing industries in the study area is positive because as the values of accessibility’ increases, the number of manufacturing industries increases. Also low correlation figure of 0.40 shows that this relationship is fairly weak. On the contrary, a high correlation of 0.70 was obtained at 95% confidence level between accessibility and wholesale activity’ in the United States (Janelle, 1969). The lower correlations gotten in the present work is a clear indication of the influence of deliberate planning and government intervention regardless of the effect of transport and other economic forces, in the location of manufacturing industries. Nigeria, in her development planning effort is embracing industrialization as the main panacea for her development. Such hopes are based on the growth centre strategy, where certain centers get more attraction i.e. Nnebisi road with eight industries as observed in Appendix 3, while areas that arc not centrally located are ignored i.e. Isieke and Old Nit road. Also, since these areas are among old regional centers, the reasons for the absence of manufacturing industries might be due to the “strong tendency towards agglomeration” of the manufacturing industries of the old regional centers (Mabogunje, 1969). The possibility’ that industries would survive in small and young areas like old Nit road is low and industrialists hesitate sitting industries in such areas. The result is that existing industrial areas like Nnebisi road and Benin-Asaba express way provide a greater attraction to new industries as against a brand new location. A large part of this attraction is related to certain savings due to agglomeration. “Thus a center with an early start in some industry has therefore a competitive advantage that it may maintain an increase even though the early start was due to poor chance (Hover, 1948).The fairly strong correlation figure of 0.40 goes a long way to show that there are other factors that tend to down play the influence of transportation location decisions i.e. political consideration. The figure can also he interpreted as an increase in the accessibility of any mode accounts for an average increase in the number of industries in Asaba. In other words, the distribution pattern of industries in Asaba is explained by an average measure, of the relative position of that center to the network system. The size of the population and therefore market within an area is closely related to the threshold level at which production might be expected. Thus the minimum size of the market is often a precondition for the development of an industry in a region. The relationship between distribution of manufacturing industries and population potential (market potential) in Asaba is extremely weak. The percentage variation is 99% and goes to show that 1% of manufacturing industies in Asaba can be explained by other factors. It seems reasonable to assume that manufacturing industries would fare best if they were located at those places which are most accessible to their customers. If this is to be so then places offering high degree of locational utility relative to other places should be dominant wholesale centers (Jarielle, 1969). The correlation coefficient of accessibility’ 1 and market potentials is 0.09. This means that an increase in accessibility’ leads to a very small increase in the market potential. On the contrary, similar work done in the United States have obtained a high correlation figure of 0.81 (Janeile, 1969). This high correlation in contrast to 0.09 in Asaba is understandable. This is because, Janelle used both locational utility which include both accessibility and other locational factors that a site may enjoy. Also this study was done at a point in time i.e. 2003, while Janelle’s study was for a period of time. But the findings lend cautious support to the notion that, at least for manufacturing activity’, increase in accessibility is a useful surrogate for estimating specialization possible at a place. However, a multiple correlation coefficient was calculated with accessibility’ and population as the two independent variables and number of industries as dependent on the two variables (R1 .23) .A fairly’ high positive correlation of 0.40 was obtained. This means that an increase in the two dependent variables leads to an increase in the market potential.

POLICY IMPLICATION

For practical relevance, the state government at Asaba should direct their efforts towards the construction of good roads as this will bring about changes in the urban pattern, leading to increase in the number of industries in a process of spatial re-organization. Also, the government should direct their effort towards the optimum location of industries as well as promote and encourage industrial dispersal among various centers in Asaba.

CONCLUSION

Although, accessibility is related to the distribution of manufacturing industries in an urban center, it is not totally explained by the availability or lack of transport facilities (roads). in other words, transport plays a very negligible role in the distribution pattern of industries. Also, the weak relationship between accessibility and distribution of industries is due to the fact that some centers have locational advantages that far out-weight the importance of accessibility. Finally, the locational pattern of pre-Asaba has not changed significantly in sympathy with the accessibility trend, thus the importance of centers offering the greatest potential for transport oriented industries has not been fully recognised in Asaba.

REFERENCES

Atubi. A.O. and Onokala. P.C. (2004a): “The Accessibility of Centres to the Road Networks: the Case of Lagos Island, Lagos, Nigeria”. International Journal of Ecology and Environmental Dynamics. Vol. 2, Pp. 140-151

Atubi. AC. and Onokala, P.C. (2004b): “The Road Network Characteristics on Traffic Flow on the South Western Nigeria: A Case of Lagos Mainland. Pecop Journal of Environmental Design and Management in the Tropics. Vol. 1, No. 1, Pp. 39-51.

Atubi, A.O. and Ughomeh. B., A. (2002) Small-scale Industries in Warn: A Geographical Appraisal of Types and Factors Governing Location. Journal of the Zaria Geographer. Vol. 15, No. 1 pp. 68-79.

Bardi, E.C. (1982) Development of Road Network accessibility of urban centres within Bendel State of Nigeria 1967-1981: A Graph theory Approach. Unpublished B.Sc thesis, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Garrison. W.L. and Marble. D.F. (1964), “Factor-Analytic study of the connectivity of the Transport Network” Papers of the Regional Science Association. 12, pp. 23 1-9.

Gautheir, H.L. (1970) “Geography of Transportation and Regional Development”. Economic Geographer Vol. 46

Hover, E.M. (1948) The Location of Economic Activity, New York, McGraw Hill.

Janelle, D.G. (1969) Spatial reorganization: A Model and Concepts. Annals of Association of American Geographers, Vol. 59, pp., 348-364.

Mabogunje, A.L. (1969) Urbanization in Nigeria. London.

Monanu, P.C. and Hodgson, M.J. (1976) “Problems in the Application of Graph Theoretic Measures to Transport Network Growth: A case study of Alberta Highways”. New themes in Western Canadian Geography. The Langara papers. Bc Geographic series. No. 22 occasional papers in Geography.

Nwafor, J.C. (1984) Manufacturing and Consumer Goods. In Nigeria jn mans, Barbour K.M. et al (eds) London, fodder and Stoughton.

Olagbaiye, J.A. (1968) “Towards Manufacturing Locational Analysis in Southern Nigeria: A Population Potential Model”. Nigerian Geographical Journal, Vol. II, No. 1 Pp. 11-19.

Onokerhjoraye, A.C. (1981) “The transportation system and the distribution of public services in Nigeria” Transportation in Nigerian National Development, (eds) S.C. Onakomaiya, and N.F. Ekanem,N.1.S.E,R., lbadan, Pp. 196-214.

Onyemelukwe, J.O.C. (1978). “Structural and Locational characteristics of manufacturing” in Oguntoyinbo, J.S. et al (eds) A Geography of Nigerian Development. Heinemann Pubs. Ibadan Pp. 296-310.

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FIG. 1: MAP OF DELTA STATE SHOWING STUDY AREA

Source: Ministry of Land and Survey, Asaba (2002)

APPENDIX I

3 (Destination)