Leadership, the Financial Sector and Development in Nigeria

Studies have shown that leadership is a vital factor for the realization of organizational goals in the public and private sector of any economy. This article therefore examines leadership, the financial sector and development in Nigeria. The financial sector represented by banks in this article is so crucial to the Nigerian economy in terms of its contribution to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, and in addition to being a vital source of employment. To appreciate the role of leadership in an organization vis-à-vis the financial sector and development in Nigeria, the paper focused on the challenge in some Nigerian banks in 2009, which borders on unethical practice of certain bank executives. This development almost led to the collapse of some notable banks in Nigeria resulting from their inability to meet financial obligations to customers. With the use of secondary data, the paper identified leadership failure of unethical practice (corruption in terms of granting unsecured loans to family members and personal companies to the detriment of bank depositors and shareholders) as the greatest problems militating against banks’ roles as facilitator of development in Nigeria. The study recommends among others the introduction of formal education in ethics as a way of making sure that staff members imbibe ethical practice as a check against abuse of office

Close-Packing of Clusters: Application to Al_100

The lowest energy configurations of close-packed clusters up to N=110 atoms with stacking faults are studied using the Monte Carlo method with Metropolis algorithm. Two types of contact interactions, a pair-potential and a many-atom interaction, are used. Enhanced stability is shown for N=12, 26, 38, 50, 59, 61, 68, 75, 79, 86, 100 and 102, of which only the sizes 38, 75, 79, 86, and 102 are pure FCC clusters, the others having stacking faults. A connection between the model potential and density functional calculations is studied in the case of Al_100. The density functional calculations are consistent with the experimental fact that there exist epitaxially grown FCC clusters starting from relatively small cluster sizes. Calculations also show that several other close-packed motifs existwith comparable total energies.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

IMPACT OF CORRUPTION ON BANK PROFITABILITY IN NIGERIA

This study sought to econometrically analyze the impact of corruption on bank profitability in Nigeria. Using a panel data set comprising 358 observations of 48 unique banks over the 1996 - 2006 time period, backward stepwise regression results reveal that corruption has a significant positive impact on bank profitability in Nigeria. The results lend credence to accusations that banks in Nigeria are thriving from corruption in the countryBanking, Profitability, Corruption, Nigeria

The media, ethnicity and religion as determinants of failed republics in Nigeria

This paper analyses the covert influence of ethnicity and religion on the media and voting in Nigerian elections and demonstrates how previous Nigerian republics have been hindered because of the impact of ethnic disservice and election crises, thereby providing opportunities for the military to topple each of those failed civilian administrations. Unfortunately, the press could not play a meaningful role in the 1964/65 election crises because the leaders of the factional groups in those conflicts were equally the owners of the early newspapers. So, they simply converted their papers into channels for fighting wars of personal vendetta. In fact, ethnic rivalry and religious intolerance are today the two major sources of conflict in Nigerian politics. For these reasons the paper advises the media to avoid playing the role of an advocate in the support of individuals and governmental agencies as well as ethnic nationality whose aims and objectives are inimical to the national interest and religious tolerance among the Nigerian public

Site determination and thermally assisted tunneling in homogenous nucleation

A combined low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy and density functional theory study on the binding and diffusion of copper monomers, dimers, and trimers adsorbed on Cu(111) is presented. Whereas atoms in trimers are found in fcc sites only, monomers as well as atoms in dimers can occupy the stable fcc as well as the metastable hcp site. In fact the dimer fcc-hcp configuration was found to be only 1.3 meV less favorable with respect to the fcc-fcc configuration. This enables a confined intra-cell dimer motion, which at temperatures below 5 K is dominated by thermally assisted tunneling.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure