Chapter One — 1.1 Background to the Study

Last-mile delivery — the final movement of a shipment from a distribution hub to the customer's own address — is consistently identified as the most expensive and operationally fragile segment of the logistics chain, a problem that has grown more visible in Nigeria as e-commerce platforms and delivery-on-demand services have expanded the volume of parcels moving through cities not originally built around door-to-door delivery. Distribution companies operating in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and other major Nigerian cities routinely report failed or delayed deliveries traceable to the same handful of causes: inconsistent or informal street addressing, unpredictable traffic conditions, and — perhaps most fundamentally — a near-total lack of real-time visibility into where a given parcel or delivery vehicle actually is between dispatch and arrival.

The Internet of Things offers a comparatively low-cost way to close that visibility gap. GPS- and GSM-enabled tracking devices, now inexpensive enough to attach to a delivery vehicle or, in some cases, a parcel itself, can report location data continuously rather than only when a dispatcher happens to call the rider or driver to ask. Applied systematically, this kind of tracking has the potential to convert last-mile delivery from a process the customer and dispatcher must simply trust is proceeding correctly into one they can actually observe — with direct implications for how quickly a failed or delayed delivery is noticed, and how confidently a lost parcel can be traced.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Many Nigerian last-mile delivery operations still rely on phone calls and rider self-reporting to establish where a delivery currently stands, a process that is slow to reveal problems, easy to falsify, and offers no record a dispatcher can review after the fact. When a delivery is delayed, misrouted, or the parcel goes missing entirely, operators frequently have no data trail beyond the rider's own account of events. This project addresses that gap by designing and implementing an IoT-based tracking system intended to give Nigerian last-mile delivery operations continuous, verifiable visibility into vehicle location and delivery status, in place of the current call-and-trust model.

1.3 Objectives of the Study

1. To examine the specific causes of inefficiency and loss in Nigerian last-mile delivery operations.
2. To design an IoT-based tracking architecture capable of capturing real-time vehicle location and delivery status.
3. To implement a prototype tracking system integrating GPS/GSM hardware with a web-based dispatch dashboard.
4. To develop geofencing and alerting functionality that flags delayed, misrouted, or stalled deliveries automatically.
5. To evaluate the prototype's effect on delivery time predictability and loss detection against a manual, call-based tracking baseline.

1.4 Research Questions

1. What specific factors most commonly cause inefficiency and loss in Nigerian last-mile delivery operations?
2. How can IoT-based tracking hardware be integrated into a practical, low-cost delivery-tracking architecture?
3. To what extent does real-time tracking improve the predictability of delivery times compared with manual tracking?
4. How effectively does the system detect and flag delayed, misrouted, or lost deliveries?
5. What would a Nigerian logistics operator need in place to adopt a system of this kind at scale?

1.5 Significance of the Study

This project is significant to Nigerian logistics and last-mile delivery operators seeking a practical, affordable path toward real-time delivery visibility, offering a working reference design rather than a theoretical proposal. It is equally relevant to e-commerce platforms whose customer experience depends heavily on delivery reliability, and contributes to the growing body of Internet of Things application research addressing problems specific to the Nigerian logistics environment, including inconsistent addressing and limited existing tracking infrastructure.

1.6 Scope of the Study

The project is limited to the design, implementation and evaluation of an IoT-based vehicle and delivery tracking prototype for last-mile delivery operations, using GPS/GSM tracking hardware reporting to a web-based dispatch dashboard. It is evaluated against simulated last-mile delivery scenarios rather than a live commercial delivery fleet, and does not extend to warehouse or first-mile logistics, route-optimisation algorithms, or integration with a specific existing logistics company's operational systems.