Sustainable Welfare Model for the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the North-Eastern Nigeria: The Role of Waqf Financing

The North East region of Nigeria has been experiencing the devastating impact of Boko Haram insurgency which triggered humanitarian crisis and destruction of infrastructure, leading to many becoming internally displaced persons in their country. The Federal Government and the Northeast State Governments, alongside the local and international Non-governmental organizations and development partners have been mostly providing relief services and materials to the IDPs, but despite all these efforts, there is still a funding gap, thus the need to bridge this vacuum; to supplement the efforts of governmental and non-governmental organizations in providing a long term and sustainable welfare model. It is against this backdrop that this study aims at unlocking the potentials of waqf financing model in catering for short-term and long-term welfare of IDPs in the Northeast and how the model could be properly utilized to complement the efforts of governmental and non-governmental organizations in the region. Multistage sampling method was employed in selecting respondents for the study. In the first stage, three States were purposively selected out of the six States of the region based on the devastation level by the insurgency. Thematic Analysis was employed as the method of data analysis. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to summarize and interpret the results of the thematic analyses of the data obtained. The findings of this research have shown the potentials of Waqf financing in bridging the funding gap of IDPs welfare in the north-east. The study also found out that food and clothing are the most critical areas that require immediate attention in the Waqf based IDPs welfare and that, the Investment Waqf Model will be the best means of financing the IDPs Welfare programme in the Northeast due to its modest unique potential advantages over other models. Finally, the study also identified that Conversion of IDPs Support Waqf to Less privilege Support Waqf in case of return of IDPs to their respective communities is the best exit plan for Waqf based IDPs welfare model amongst all other listed exit plans. Key Words: North-East, IDPs, Welfare and Waqf Financin

Impact of Global Economic Meltdown on Property Development in Bauchi, Nigeria

The global economic meltdown is a situation in which the economy of a country experiences a sudden downturn brought on by a financial crisis. This global recession was caused by so many factors, thus, inflation rate, exchange rate, interest rate, unemployment rate, etc. This paper examined the impact of the global economic meltdown on property development in Bauchi, Nigeria. Data for the study are mainly primary in the form of questionnaires administered. The study had property development as an endogenous variable while a high-interest rate and unemployment rate as exogenous variables to measure the constructs. Multiple Regression were used to analyze the data. Among the study, findings are that high relationship exists between the two predictor variables (High-Interest Rate & Unemployment Rate) and dependent variable (property Development) where ‘R’ of 0.724 means the correlation is about 72 %; with R2 of 0.052 indicate that 5.2 % correlation, the analysis also depict in coefficient table that high-interest rate has more influence on dependent variable (PD) than unemployment rate. The analysis signified that the impact of the global economic meltdown has a positive effect on the dependent variable. Based on the findings, the study recommended governments and financial institutions intervention to curb the impediment of property development in Bauchi, Nigeria

Analyzing Variables in Wheel of Participation a Synergy in Facilities Management for Enhancing Academic Performance

This study analyzed variables in the wheel of participation advocated by Davidson (1998); in this study, wheel of participation is adopted as synergy in facilities management for the maintenance of university community infrastructure and facilities, to examine the effects of synergy by the local community and the university authority in facilities management for enhancing academic performance in Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi (ATBU). 100 questionnaires composed on 5 level-Linkert scales were randomly distributed, Reliability analysis was conducted to check the level of internal consistency among the measuring items, while Multiple Regression Analysis and Structural Equation Modelling with AMOS simultaneously analyzed the effects of the exogenous variables (information, consultation, participation & empowerment) on the endogenous variable (academic excellence) in ATBU. Estimates of the structural model revealed that information sharing, consultation with stakeholders, participation by local community members and empowering stakeholders do not influence academic excellence. While the regression analysis indicated a weak relationship between all the four predictor variables and the academic excellence; and with R2 of 0.029 meant that the predictor variables accounted for only 2.9 % of the variance on academic excellence, thus, 97.1 % is accounted for by other variables not covered in this study. Further studies are recommended to supplement more predictor variables like students´ talent, intuition, flair, willingness to learn (zeal), finance and so on; using the inductive approach

Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of the North-East: The Role of Sukuk Financing

The Northeast region of Nigeria has been experiencing the devastating impact of Boko Haram insurgencysince 2009, which triggeredhumanitarian crisis and destruction of infrastructure,such as schools, hospitals, roads, bridges as well as homes and farmlands, leading to many becoming internally displaced persons and refugees. Both governmental and non-governmental organizations have been mostly providing relief services and materials, whilst only few Federal Government agencies and State Governmentsare providing reconstruction and rehabilitation due to insufficient sources of funds(Olaseni, 2012).The emergence of Sukuk to Nigerian Capital Market is a new development that provides alternative funding avenue for both State and Federal Governments to finance projects and infrastructure development for nation building (Alaro, 2020).It is against this backdrop that this study aims to reviewthe approaches of financing rehabilitation and reconstruction programmes in the Northeast and examines how the potentials ofSukuk financing could properly be utilized to complement the infrastructural deficit in the region. Thus, the research is an exploratory qualitative research that sourced cross sectional primary data collected through the use of structured questionnaire. Multistage purposive sampling method was employed in selecting the respondents for the study across the study area. Thematic Analysis was employed as the method of data analysis. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to summarize and interpret the results of the thematic analyses of the data obtained.Keywords: North-East, Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Sukuk Financin

Sustaining tuberculosis decline in the UK

The re-emergence of tuberculosis in England began in the late 1980s increasing to a peak in 2011; since then incidence has fallen throughout the UK, in both the UK and non-UK born population, including in children.1 After 4 consecutive years of declining incidence of tuberculosis, sustained progress is finally being made with a 30% decline between 2011 and 2015.1 However, tuberculosis incidence in the UK remains higher than in most other high-income European countries and more than four times higher than in the USA

Religious and Cash Holding: Evidence from Indonesia

This research examines the effect of religiosity on the cash holding. The method used to test the model is panel data regression by investigating the effect of religiosity on the cash holding of shari'a and non-shari'a companies. The results show that  Religiosity (Islamic Dichotomic), showing a positive and significant coefficient on cash holdings. Companies with a high level of religiosity hold significant amounts of cash. The companies hold cash to reduce risk by reducing debt financing. Keywords: cash holdings, religiosity, ris

Detection of Offensive and Threatening Online Content in a Low Resource Language

Hausa is a major Chadic language, spoken by over 100 million people in Africa. However, from a computational linguistic perspective, it is considered a low-resource language, with limited resources to support Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks. Online platforms often facilitate social interactions that can lead to the use of offensive and threatening language, which can go undetected due to the lack of detection systems designed for Hausa. This study aimed to address this issue by (1) conducting two user studies (n=308) to investigate cyberbullying-related issues, (2) collecting and annotating the first set of offensive and threatening datasets to support relevant downstream tasks in Hausa, (3) developing a detection system to flag offensive and threatening content, and (4) evaluating the detection system and the efficacy of the Google-based translation engine in detecting offensive and threatening terms in Hausa. We found that offensive and threatening content is quite common, particularly when discussing religion and politics. Our detection system was able to detect more than 70% of offensive and threatening content, although many of these were mistranslated by Google's translation engine. We attribute this to the subtle relationship between offensive and threatening content and idiomatic expressions in the Hausa language. We recommend that diverse stakeholders participate in understanding local conventions and demographics in order to develop a more effective detection system. These insights are essential for implementing targeted moderation strategies to create a safe and inclusive online environment.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figures, 8 table