Provision of public goods and health outcomes during political transition in Nigeria

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.This study investigates three issues connected with governance and citizens welfare in Nigeria. One of the current debates in the political economy literature focuses on the bene ts of democracies to ordinary citizens, especially in developing countries, and particularly in sub-Saharan African countries. Most Nigerians have been questioning the bene ts of transition from military rule to democratic rule in 1999 to ordinary citizens. This concern relates to the lack of credibility of electoral processes in the country. Politicians in Nigeria have embarked on various unlawful strategies both to win and perpetuate positions of power, with no regard for the principles of free and fair elections. Non-credible elections often lead to capture of political power at both national and sub-national levels in the country by special interest groups headed by political godfathers (1). This thesis examines whether transition from an autocratic military regime to a relatively competitive democratic regime results in higher provision of public goods and a reduction in health inequality, given the prevalence of political capture due to lack of credible electoral competition in Nigeria. The thesis questions the assumption that transition from a military dictatorship to relatively competitive democratic rule will ensure an increase in the provision of public goods and a reduction in health inequality

An Evaluation of Open Source Geographic Information Systems Routing Tools in Vaccine Delivery in Kano State, Northern Nigeria

The recent proliferation of online/desktop/mobile open source geographic information systems (GIS)routing tools such as qgis road graph plugin (QRG), open street routing machine (OSRM), google maps engine (GME), graphhopper (GH), and Osm And has led to the need to provide a method for comparatively evaluating the strength and weakness of these routing tools. This is crucial in view of its implication on the prospect and otherwise of routing related projects such as supply chain logistics, supply/delivery operations, and emergency services, among others. In this paper, comparative evaluation of these tools has been carried out using drive test survey and desktop routing estimation with respect to routine vaccine delivery in Kano, Nigeria. Kano state being one of the states in Nigeria with huge burden of health challenges with records of 3062 maternal death between 2005 – 2010(Ibrahim, 2014) . Thus vaccine delivery is one of such healthcare delivery programmes used to addressing some of these health challenges. The primary objective of this paper is to demonstrate comparative advantage of using open sourceGIS routing tools to optimize vaccine delivery process such that there would be significant reduction in logistics, manpower and cost associated with routine vaccine delivery. The capacity of the selected open source GIS routing tools was evaluated against this backdrop. Hence drive test survey was used to define the benchmark for determine the best rank among these desktop routing tools. The drive test survey was carried on selected number of delivery routes and the results were compared with values derived from desktop routing estimation using these tools. Two rounds of drive test survey were carried out for the delivery routes and an average was considered in order to minimum possible error associated with possible inconsistent in driving behavior. Significant discrepancies were observed in the outputs derived between desktop (QRG), online (OSRM, GME, GH) and mobile (Osm And) routing platforms. OSM vector base map was used across all the routing tools except GME.The overall outcome indicated QRG had the highest cumulative error margin of 67.52km while the lowest was reported for GraphHoper (46.17km) using same OSM base map. This is an indication that the routing algorithm used is not the same. When compared with GME that uses different base map, the cumulative error margin is very close (QRG – 67.52, GME – 55.99), an indication that similar routing algorithm has been used. Drive test outcome may not be sufficient to determine best or otherwise routing tool, it may be appropriate to consider other valuable criteria for the purpose of ranking these tools. Hence, those criteria were not limited to drive test/routing output error margin, others include capacity for multiple routing, base map completeness/content, support for traffic input, routing platform, and alternative routing option. With these considerations, QRG was ranked 1st. while OsmAnd (5) was least ranked. GME and GH had same ranking (2). QRG was ranked above other OSM based routing tools because it uses desktop platform and a capacity to integrate traffic input. It was ranked above GME majorly because of its robust OSM base map compared to google base map

Modeling Tuberculosis (TB) Using Higher Order Markov Model

This paper focused on the higher-Order Markov Model whose number of states and parameters are linear with respect to the order of the model and as well as classifying it. Model for Efficient estimation methods of the parameters was developed and the model was applied to solve the application of DOTS in the treatment of tuberculosis health problem. Numerical examples with applications are given to illustrate the power of our proposed model. It was discovered that the second order Markov model was best fit base on the values of the AIC and BIC result obtained.

On The Comparative Analysis Of Beta And Kumaraswamy Priors Using Stigmatized Attributes

Hussain et al 2011 compared bayes estimator of population proportion of a stigmatized attribute with the Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) but this paper compares two priors: beta and kumaraswamy in the Bayesian analysis using various values of n, x, p1 and p2 and it was observed that across the sample sizes considered over different values of  x’s, p1 and p2 using R package software for simulation, the mean square error and bias of the Kumaraswamy prior are smaller than that of Beta prior when the proportion of stigmatized attribute increases from 0.1 to 0.4 Keyword: Prior, Beta, kumaraswamy, Stigmatized, Attribut

On Improved Estimation of Population Mean using Qualitative Auxiliary Information

This paper deals with the estimation of population mean of the variable under study by improved ratio-product type exponential estimator using qualitative auxiliary information. The expression for the bias and mean squared error (MSE) of the proposed estimators has been derived to the first order of approximation. A comparative approach has been adopted to study the efficiency of proposed and previous estimators. The present estimators provide us significant improvement over previous estimators leading to the better perspective of application in various applied areas. The numerical demonstration has been presented to elucidate the novelty of paper. Keywords: Exponential estimator, auxiliary attribute, Proportion, bias, mean squared error, efficiency. Mathematics Subject Classification 2010: 62D0

Multivariate Generalized Poisson Distribution for Interference on Selected Non-Communicable Diseases in Lagos State, Nigeria

Multivariate Generalized Poisson Distribution (MGPD) models are applied to make inferences regarding non-communicable diseases, diabetes, hypertension, stroke and ulcer in Lagos State, Nigeria. The generalized Poisson distribution is employed due to its usefulness in modeling count data in the presence of either over- or under- dispersion. Results show that the correlation between ulcer and stroke is not significant. Other pairwise comparisons of diseases are significant, thus implying that a patient who suffers from diabetes or stroke has a high propensity to also be hypertensive

Improved Modified Ratio Estimation of Population Mean Using Information on Size of the Sample

In sample surveys, auxiliary information is used for estimation to improve the efficiency of estimators. Increased precision can be obtained when the variable under study is highly correlated with auxiliary information. In this study, the sample size has been used as information for improved estimation of population mean of the main variable under study. A new modified generalized ratio type estimator of population mean has been proposed and the efficiency was examined using Murthy (1967) and Mukhopadhyay (2009) dataset. The large sample properties, the bias and the mean squared error of the newly proposed modified ratio estimator were obtained up to first order of approximation. The optimum value of the characterizing scalar which minimizes the mean squared error was obtained and the minimum value of the mean squared error of the proposed modified ratio estimator for this optimum value was also obtained. A theoretical comparison of the proposed modified ratio estimators was made with the other existing related estimators of population mean using auxiliary information. The conditions under which the proposed modified ratio estimators perform better than the other existing estimators of population mean are given. A numerical study was also carried out to see the performances of the proposed modified ratio estimators and some existing related ratio estimators of population mean and verify the conditions under which the proposed modified ratio estimators are better than some other existing related ratio estimators considered. It was shown that the proposed modified ratio estimators perform better than some existing related ratio estimators as they are having lower mean squared errors. Keywords: Ratio Estimator, Sample size, Bias, Mean Squared Error, Efficienc

Macroeconomic Effects of Central Bank Independence and Transparency: The case of Nigeria.

As the Nigerian economy tend towards democracy, the search began for how to establish monetary institutional policies that can be viewed as credible commitments. There is the notion that Central Banks in democratic economies have the likelihood of higher inflationary bias than other economies. Delegation of monetary policy to an independent central bank seem to be a good option for these economies. Thus, since then, greater independence became the practice across all groups of countries, but has been particularly marked for developing and emerging market economies. Transparency has been a good ingredient of Independence. Authors have not been able to conclude on the impact of these on macro economic variables, especially in the less developed countries where democracy is gaining ground and most government are trying to use monetary policies to support their government and administration. Against this background, this paper investigated the impact these two variables will have on many macroeconomic variables in these countries taking Nigeria as a case study. Indices of these variables were calculated and their impact was investigated on selected macroeconomic variables. The findings revealed that CBN independence and transparency means more employment for the Nigerian economy. It has negative effect on inflation and interest rate. The finding that increased independence lead to low interest rate is particularly very important for the growth of the economy. Keywords: Central bank independence, Inflation Targeting, Transparency, Monetary policy

Ocular Co-morbidity in Patients with Refractive Errors in Nigeria

Purpose: To d etermine the p attern and p revalence of other ocu lar p roblems seen in p atients with refractive errors in a Nigerian teaching hosp ital. Methods: A retrosp ective hosp ital-based review of all consecu tive p atients who p resented with signs and symp toms of refractive errors at the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hosp itals Comp lex between 1st Janu ary 2007 and 31 Au gu st 2007. st Patients who had a d iagnosis of refractive error and su bsequ ently had d etailed eye examination were inclu d ed in this stu d y. Data was retrieved from the p atients’ clinical record s and analyzed with SPSS version 15. Results: Ou t of 724 new p atients seen within the stu d y p eriod , 235 had refractive errors (93 males and 142 females). Patients’ ages ranged between 7 and 74 years with a mean of 30.5+/ - 4.6 years. In more than half 54%) of the p atients, associated ocu lar co-morbid ities were d ocumented . The vision-imp airing d iseases d ocumented morbid ities in 56 (44.1) p atients were cataract 26 (20.5%), glau coma 20 (15.8%), d iabetic macu lop athy 3 (2.7%), amblyop ia, corneal op acities and CMV retinitis. Non vision-imp airing d isord ersd ocumented were conju nctivitis, 49 (38.6%); p terygium 6 (4.7%), chalazion 5 (3.9%), hypertensive retinop athy 4 (3.1%), d ry eyes and ep iscleritis. Immatu re cataract was responsible for abou t 2/ 3 of cases with p oor corrected visu al acu ity d ocumented in a large p rop ortion of the p atients 26 (11.1%). Conclusion: Patients with refractive errors need d etailed ocu lar examination for early d etection of other comorbid ities which may significantly affect vision and lead to avoid able blind ness and visu al imp airment.Key words: refractive errors, ocular co-morbid ity, glau coma, visu al imp airment, blind nes

Survival Estimation Using Bootstrap, Jackknife and K-Repeated Jackknife Methods

Three re-sampling techniques are used to estimate the survival probabilities from an exponential life-time distribution. The aim is to employ a technique to obtain a parameter estimate for a two-parameter exponential distribution. The re-sampling methods considered are: Bootstrap estimation method (BE), Jackknife estimation method (JE) and the k-repeated Jackknife estimation method (KJE). The methods were computed to obtain the mean square error (MSE) and mean percentage error (MPE) based on simulated data. The estimates of the two-parameter exponential distribution were substituted to estimate survival probabilities. Results show that the MSE value is reduced when the K–repeated jackknife method is used