author(s)
Okompu Davina Aberji, Prosper E Edoja and Pius Chinwuba IKE

abstract
Edible oil is a leading agribusiness enterprise in Nigeria. Much is known about its production and nutritional value but little is known about the functionality of the markets’ systems. The paper analysed effects of structure, conduct on performance of edible oil (palm and vegetable oils) markets using primary data generated through questionnaires administered by trained enumerators. A multistage sampling technique was used to select 432 edible oil marketers from 36 markets in 3 States of the Niger Delta. To ascertain the structure-conduct-performance viewpoint, the use of ordinary least square regression technique was implored to analyse the data generated from the respondents. The results portrayed that some parameters of structure (product innovation, fair prices, product homogeneity) were positive predictors of performance, while conduct (collusion) negatively affected the performance. The values of R² (0.724 and 0.612), Adjusted R₂ (0.697 and 0.578) and F statistics (F=14.747 and 5.206: p<0.01) showed that market structure and conduct respectively, had statistically significant effect on performance of edible oil markets. The study recommends policy interventions on edible oils markets such as product innovations, product homogeneity should be encouraged while market collusion be discouraged by both government and stakeholders. This would improve performance of the edible oil agribusiness and sustainability of stakeholders’ livelihoods.