Abstract
Nigeria has been unable to develop a viable ship building industry over the years notwithstanding several efforts of government at achieving that. The study aimed to identify and determine the principal component constraints to ship building development in Nigeria. Adopting the theory of constraint approach, survey research design was used in which primary data were obtained from questionnaire responses from employees and management staff of shipyards in the ship building clusters in Lagos, Port-Harcourt and Warri. The data collected were analyzed using principal component factor analysis, analysis of variance and pie-chart. It was found that the principal component constraints to the development of the ship building sector in Nigeria include financial constraint with Eigen value of 31.23%, infrastructural constraint with Eigenvalue of 26.35% and poor skill and technical know-how with Eigen value of 16.23%. This implies that financial constraints, poor skill and lack of technical know-how and infrastructural constraints contribute a cumulative Eigen value of 74.259% and thus constitute the dominant constraints impeding the performance of ship yards, ship building and repair sector in Nigeria. Development of national ship building and dry-docking funding scheme, ship building research and training center among other things were recommended.