Urbanization Processes and Child Breadwinner in Lagos Metropolis

The aim of this paper is to explain how increasing urbanization is changing family lifestyles in the city. This paper was first presented as a seminar paper in urban sociology (sociology of development postgraduate class of 2015/2016 session) in the department of sociology, University of Ibadan. Increasing population growth, high unemployment rate, low income, poor working condition, a high cost of living have all put heavy pressures on the family. This has consequently made most families engage their children in child employment and labour in order to survive the economic pressures. The demands of life in the city of Lagos make children active participants in the economic fortunes of families majorly among the poor. The cases of child labour in Lagos are high in spite of efforts by the government to reduce drastically child employment and labour. This paper, therefore, seeks to examine the changing lifestyles and family structures of the cities using the city of Lagos as a microcosm.  The city of Lagos has a large population size of more than 20 million people. The younger generation dominates the economic control of the state both in the formal and informal sectors. Children cope better with urbanization pressures and stress of Lagos megacity than the parents. This study is anchored on Oscar Lewis’s theory of culture of poverty. The thesis of the theory explains children breadwinners from the point of view of poverty and a response to the social and economic hardships. This culture is transmitted from one generation to another and they have strongly embraced the culture to be a coping mechanism and also the major solution to their problems. Consequently, children becoming breadwinners for their families have exposed a lot of them to hazardous works and make them more vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse. The definition of what child labour is most times is equivalent to the cultural definition of child work which is part of the socialization process of a child. Based on this conflicting ideology, this paper recommends that the concept of child labour should be defined from society to society. Keywords: child breadwinner, child work, urbanization processes, Lagos, child employment and labou

Causal nexus between agricultural credit rationing and repayment performance: A two-stage Tobit regression

The probability that the beneficiary would default on future payments poses a great risk to extending agricultural credit. Also, previous research on farmers' repayment of agricultural credit emphasized that a high default rate is a growing concern, thereby becoming a tall order for financial institutions to lend to farmers. Similarly, past studies accentuate an increasing focus on socio-economic characteristics as factors that explain the repayment rate. The nexus between repayment rates and credit rationing has not been well analyzed. The effect of credit rationing on repayment rate was therefore investigated. The study, therefore, investigates the causal effects of credit rationing on loan repayment performance using a structured questionnaire to elicit information from selected 240 respondents via a three-stage method of sampling technique, and the instrumental variable Tobit technique to analyze the effect of credit rationing on repayment performance. The result showed that the majority (70.83%) of the respondents are males, the mean age was 51 years with an average education year of 12.65. The result of instrumental variable Tobit regression confirmed the endogeneity of rationing rate (Wald test of exogeneity = Wald Chi2 (1) = 67.26; Prob > chi2 = 0.000) at a 1% level of statistical significance. The result with a Log-likelihood function (265.62459) revealed that the ration rate, among others, with coefficients of 0.4335, was a crucial factor in ascertaining the rate of repayment at various significant levels of the arable crop farmers in the research area. The key finding is that credit rationing did have a significantly positive influence on agricultural credit repayment. The research concluded that the significance of credit rationing in influencing the likelihood of repayment rate, points to the vital significance of adequacy in rationing borrowers

Ruthenium ion modification of glassy carbon: Implication on the structural evolution and migration behaviour of implanted Ru atoms

DATA AVAILABILITY : Data will be made available on request.Please read abstract in the article.Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD) and the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/nimbhj2024PhysicsNon

Effect of sequential isochronal annealing on the structure and migration behaviour of selenium-ion implanted in glassy carbon

Please read abstract in the article.http://www.journals.elsevier.com/vacuumhj2021Physic

Effects of implantation temperature and annealing on structural evolution and migration of Se into glassy carbon

Please read abstract in the article.The AST&D scholarship from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Nigeria, and the Postgraduate Bursary from the University of Pretoria, South Africa.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/sssciehj2023Physic

COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy in low- and middle-income countries

Widespread acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines is crucial for achieving sufficient immunization coverage to end the global pandemic, yet few studies have investigated COVID-19 vaccination attitudes in lower-income countries, where large-scale vaccination is just beginning. We analyze COVID-19 vaccine acceptance across 15 survey samples covering 10 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Asia, Africa and South America, Russia (an upper-middle-income country) and the United States, including a total of 44,260 individuals. We find considerably higher willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine in our LMIC samples (mean 80.3%; median 78%; range 30.1 percentage points) compared with the United States (mean 64.6%) and Russia (mean 30.4%). Vaccine acceptance in LMICs is primarily explained by an interest in personal protection against COVID-19, while concern about side effects is the most common reason for hesitancy. Health workers are the most trusted sources of guidance about COVID-19 vaccines. Evidence from this sample of LMICs suggests that prioritizing vaccine distribution to the Global South should yield high returns in advancing global immunization coverage. Vaccination campaigns should focus on translating the high levels of stated acceptance into actual uptake. Messages highlighting vaccine efficacy and safety, delivered by healthcare workers, could be effective for addressing any remaining hesitancy in the analyzed LMICs

COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy in low- and middle-income countries

Widespread acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines is crucial for achieving sufficient immunization coverage to end the global pandemic, yet few studies have investigated COVID-19 vaccination attitudes in lower-income countries, where large-scale vaccination is just beginning. We analyze COVID-19 vaccine acceptance across 15 survey samples covering 10 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Asia, Africa and South America, Russia (an upper-middle-income country) and the United States, including a total of 44,260 individuals. We find considerably higher willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine in our LMIC samples (mean 80.3%; median 78%; range 30.1 percentage points) compared with the United States (mean 64.6%) and Russia (mean 30.4%). Vaccine acceptance in LMICs is primarily explained by an interest in personal protection against COVID-19, while concern about side effects is the most common reason for hesitancy. Health workers are the most trusted sources of guidance about COVID-19 vaccines. Evidence from this sample of LMICs suggests that prioritizing vaccine distribution to the Global South should yield high returns in advancing global immunization coverage. Vaccination campaigns should focus on translating the high levels of stated acceptance into actual uptake. Messages highlighting vaccine efficacy and safety, delivered by healthcare workers, could be effective for addressing any remaining hesitancy in the analyzed LMICs.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The Ideology of Baby-Mama Phenomenon: Assessing Knowledge and Perceptions among Young People from Educational Institutions

This study investigated the knowledge and perception of the ideology of baby-mama concept among the youths. Particularly, this paper assessed the knowledge of the concept of baby mama among youths and also their opinion on the acceptability of this style of family structure. The study employed a qualitative approach through an in-depth interview research method. Forty respondents between the ages of 16 and 40 years were selected across three educational institutions in Oyo state, south-west Nigeria. The participants of the study voluntarily agreed to participate in the research and everything said during the course of the interview was transcribed and subjected to qualitative content analysis of latent and manifest content. The findings of this study revealed that the prevalence of the baby-mama ideology is driven by social media making it more pronounced among the youths. The phenomenon of baby-mama is perceived differently, depending on the cultural background and the value system. It is believed that the nuclear family unit of a father, mother and their biological children is good, worthwhile and deserving to be sustained as a family structure. It is quite obvious from this study that the baby-mama phenomenon is not generally welcomed among the youths

The effects of 167 MeV Xe26+ swift heavy ions irradiation on chemical vapour deposited silicon carbide

Please read abstract in the article.The National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/nimb2024-08-17hj2023Physic