Industrial Conflict and organisational Performance: A Study of Oil Companies in Rivers State, Nigeria

This study examines the impact of industrial conflict on organizational performance of oil companies in Rivers State. The study population is made up of 12,258 workers selected from the six majors oil companies in Rivers State, while Taro Yamane’s formula was used to determine the sample size of 387 employees. Data were elicited via structured questionnaire administration. Inorder to confirm the reliability of the instrument used, Cronbach’s Alpha value of 0.9 minimum bench-mark was observed. Spearman Rank Order Correlation Coefficient with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to test the hypotheses. Analysis of all the data elicited from the respondents indicates that Industrial conflict positively and significantly relates with organizational performance of oil firms in Rivers state. Specifically, lockout reported the highest impact on firms’ operations. The study further concludes that industrial conflict strongly influenced organizational performance of oil companies in Rivers State. From the conclusion, the study recommends among others that oil companies should develop plans suitable to investigate issues that would lead to conflict in their respective firms and management should apply more than one conflict resolvable strategy in order to prevent lockouts and strikes

Willingness to Pay for Weather Index Crop Insurance: Evidence from Daura and Mai’adua, Katsina State-Nigeria

As climate change takes hold globally, weather related risk threaten the livelihood of farmers with negative implications for food and nutrition security. The continued dependence on rain-fed crop production by farmers in Katsina state increases their vulnerability to weather related risk. This paper assessed the major risk faced by farmers, the main coping strategies adopted, the effectiveness of the strategies adopted and the willingness to pay for weather index crop insurance. Primary data was collected using a structured questionnaire and analyzed by frequency distribution and percentages. The findings of the study revealed that drought was the major weather related risk experienced, as stated by 97.1% of the farmers. Also, intercropping is the major mitigation and coping strategy, as stated by 57.3% of the respondents. In addition, 72.5% of respondents stated that the strategies adopted were not effective in coping with the adverse effect of weather risk. About 78.9% were willing to subscribe to weather crop index insurance policy and pay N6, 208as premium per annum. The study recommends that weather crop index insurance policy should be implemented fully or as a pilot.&nbsp

Effects of Job Creation Determinants on the Security of Abuja Metropolis

This paper seek to evaluate the effects of job creation parameters on security challenges in Abujausing skilled and unskilled factor as a major job creation determinant factor. The research paperemployed cross-sectional survey designed due to the number of respondent and the time frame forthis investigation. Questionnaires were designed in line with the objective of the study andpersonally distributed to the entire two hundred and forty-six (246) staff of National Directorate ofEmployment (NDE) Headquarters in Abuja. In other to fulfil the research objectives, multipleregression was used to test and validate the guess statement postulated for the investigation at nintyfive percent (95%) confidence level. The result of the hypotheses tested reveals that, both skilled job creation and unskilled job creation have significant positive effect on security in Abuja The paper recommendations were based on the study findings which states that government should pay more attention and allocated more resources to both skilled and unskilled employment creation programs in other to improve the state of security in Abuja. Government should attract more industries to FCT to ensure that more employment opportunities are created so as to reduce the level of unemployed of youths in order to improve security level in the federal capital territory

Strategic Investment Decision in High-Tech Business Environment: A Case of the Nigerian Banking Sector

The global financial crisis triggered major changes in the approach to the ways business are run with the recognition that in order to ensure survival, management strategies must include employing financial stability through high-tech operations as an additional objective. The banking sector is arguably one of the most active and largest of the services sector in Nigeria playing an important role in the monetary system and the financial frame work of the country. The business dynamics of this sector largely differs from other service sector as it is information technology driven. Information in high-tech environment generally referred to as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) which the banking industry can be classified as is capital intensive and with the world seen today as a global village where transaction are no more done in isolation to a country alone but within a spider web form of connectivity, this drives banks to now requires a sound information technology system to cope with the changing demand. Adequate capital budget is needed to provide sound data management alongside data security for the system to run and meet this trend. This theoretical paper reviews the concept of capital budgeting in high tech environmentsand how science, technology, engineering, and mathematics can be applied by Nigerian banking industry to reduce costs, improve product quality, and enhance organizational performance and acceptance. The paper attempts to show issues and challenges faced by Nigerian banking sector under the new normal driven by high-tech information system that gives an edge over other competitors

Effects of Financial Performance and Firm Size on Firms’ Value: Empirical Study of Insurance Companies in Nigeria

The listed Insurance firms in Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE) have been recording mixed results and that places a question on their financial performance and firm value. Over the last decades, this poor trend in the company’s firm value of the listed firms justified a relook into the financial performance and firm value of the company. Therefore, this study evaluates the Effects of Financial Performance and Firm Size on Firms ‘Value of 21 quoted Insurance Companies on the Nigerian Stock Exchange as at the 31st December, 2020. The study covered the period of 8 years (2012-2019). Return on Assets and Return on Equity proxied financial performance; Natural logarithm of total assets proxied firm size while Tobin's Q proxied firms' value. Firm age serves as control variable which is defined as firms' incorporated period. The study uses ex-post facto research design and longitudinal panel which consists of time series and cross sectional data. The data were analyzedusing descriptive statistics and regression with the aid of STATA 15 version. The study revealed that all explanatory variables, except return on assets, firm Size and Firm Age have positive significant effect on Tobin's Q. Specifically, Return on equity has insignificant effect on Tobin's Q. Therefore, the study recommends that the management of Insurance firms in Nigeria should only use return on assets and firm size by increasing the total assets to improve the firm's value

Leverage and Financial Performance of Listed Deposit Money Banks in Nigeria

Consideration is given in this paper to the effect that financial leverage may have on financial results of deposit money banks that operate in Nigeria. The measurement of financial performance was done using Return on Assets (ROA), while debts (both long-term and short-term) served as the explanatory variables. The main data for analysis was derived from financial statements of the 14 banks in the sample for the ten-year period 2009-2018. Consequent upon the diagnostic tests, robust Ordinary Least Square (OLS) was chosen as the tool for the analysis. From the regression results, ROA of the banks in the sample was affected significantly by long-term debt ratio and short-term debt ratio, the former negatively and the latter positively. Principally, a conclusion of the paper is that the financial performance of banks in Nigeria is affected positively and significantly by highershort-term debt. Thus, it is recommended among other things that managers of banks should explore ways of debt of short-term nature especially in the area of customer deposit

Spending and Public Debt Nexus in Nigeria: The Role of External Reserves

Despite the numerous studies on military spending and external debt, almost none of the researchers focus on the impact of defense spending and external reserves on public debt, particularly in Nigeria.The paper used Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique to study the relationship between spending and public debt from 1980-2019 in Nigeria. Also, the authors examine the role of external reserves in the country. The findings reveal that a cointegration exists between the militaryexpenditure, public debt and external reserves. Furthermore, the outcomes show that both military expenditure and external reserves have a significant and negative effect on public debt in the long run. Based on the empirical results, the article suggests that: government should take appropriate steps to increase military expenditure in order to reduce rising debt in Nigeria. Also, government should provide measures that raise external reserves in Nigeria

Economic growth, Unemployment and Poverty: Implications for Inclusive Growth Architecture in Nigeria

This study investigates the impact of economic growth on employment and poverty in Nigeria, as a first approximation towards inclusive growth architecture. Using the Ordinary Least Squares regression, growth was found neither to have raised the level of employment nor reduced poverty in Nigeria under the period of investigation. An increase in growth rate is associated with a rise in poverty and unemployment, although not statistically significant. The findings are suggestive of public policy targeted at increasing the level of growth which raises the level of employment and reduces poverty, as a precursor to an inclusive growth organogram for Nigeria