e‐Maintenance Framework for Strategic Asset Management in Tertiary Institutions

Tertiary institutions require buildings such as its senate building, classrooms, laboratories, administrative rooms, hostels and other offices in order to function. Providing and maintaining these buildings require a lot of planning and capital investment. The study examined the prospects of using e‐ Maintenance platform for strategic asset management in tertiary institutions. This study noted that adequate maintenance of the building infrastructural base of tertiary institutions is crucial for sustainability in the face of dwindling funds in the education sector. In order to automate the e‐ Maintenance process for strategic maintenance of the institution’s building maintenance, a use case diagram, system block diagram, sequence diagram and activity diagram were designed and presented in this study. Three (3) main users are essential in the sequence of operation of the e‐Maintenance platform. These users represent the building occupants, the facility manager and the management personnel; for effective oversite and performance monitoring. The methodology of this research includes using the combination of HTML, CSS and the C‐Sharp programming language for the interface design and server side scripting while MySQL was the database platform used for storing and retrieving the data used for the application. In conclusion, the study developed an e‐Maintenance framework for strategic asset management in tertiary institutions. Keywords Asset management Automation Construction industr

M-Commerce Implementation in Nigeria: Trends and Issues

Nigeria was described as the fastest growing telecoms nation in Africa and the third in the World. The country had experienced a phenomenal growth from a teledensity of 0.49 in 2000 to 25.22 in 2007. This trend has brought about a monumental development in the major sectors of the economy, such as banking, telecoms and commerce in general. This paper presents the level of adoption of ICT in the banking sector and investigates the prospects of m-Commerce in Nigeria based on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis. Findings revealed that all banks in Nigeria offer e-Banking services and about 52% of the offer some forms of m-Banking services. The banks and the telecoms operators have enormous potentials and opportunities for m-Commerce but the level of patronage, quality of cell phones, lack of basic infrastructure and security issues pose a major threat to its wide scale implementation

Knowledge Discovery in Online Repositories: A Text Mining Approach

Before the advent of the Internet, the newspapers were the prominent instrument of mobilization for independence and political struggles. Since independence in Nigeria, the political class has adopted newspapers as a medium of Political Competition and Communication. Consequently, most political information exists in unstructured form and hence the need to tap into it using text mining algorithm. This paper implements a text mining algorithm on some unstructured data format in some newspapers. The algorithm involves the following natural language processing techniques: tokenization, text filtering and refinement. As a follow-up to the natural language techniques, association rule mining technique of data mining is used to extract knowledge using the Modified Generating Association Rules based on Weighting scheme (GARW). The main contributions of the technique are that it integrates information retrieval scheme (Term Frequency Inverse Document Frequency) (for keyword/feature selection that automatically selects the most discriminative keywords for use in association rules generation) with Data Mining technique for association rules discovery. The program is applied to Pre-Election information gotten from the website of the Nigerian Guardian newspaper. The extracted association rules contained important features and described the informative news included in the documents collection when related to the concluded 2007 presidential election. The system presented useful information that could help sanitize the polity as well as protect the nascent democracy

A Framework for e-Commerce Implementation: Nigeria a Case Study

The advent of the Internet has transformed the business environment in no small measure and has influenced the ways and manner businesses are transacted. This platform has brought about enhanced electronic and mobile business transactions. However, the advent of e-Commerce, m-Commerce or i-Commerce has placed a premium on the participating organisations or nations in terms of provision of the basic infrastructure for a secure, seamless and trusted business environment through the electronic media. This paper presents an exploratory study of the prospects of e-Commerce implementation and the factors inhibiting its growth. A set of questionnaire was designed, administered and analysed based on political, economic, social and technological (PEST) analysis. The PEST analysis is to help review the current practices with a view to developing a framework for Nigeria and other developing nations in Africa. Findings revealed that the Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) is the most widely used medium of e-Payment in Nigeria, which is not very suitable for e-Commerce implementation. Similarly, the Internet penetration is still abysmally low and is one of the major threats to e-Commerce implementation. However, the nascent democracy enjoyed in Nigeria is faced with some teething problems, but it promised with time, relative political stability, direct foreign investment, improved economical atmosphere, improved social services and technological development more than ever witnessed in the country. Therefore, a viable framework for Nigeria and Africa would be such that involves the private and public partnership (PPP). This consortium is expected to provide the platform for access to the Internet and popularize the use of e-Payment among other things

Statistical exploration of dataset examining key indicators influencing housing and urban infrastructure investments in megacities

Lagos, by the UN standards, has attained the megacity status, with the attendant challenges of living up to that titanic position; regrettably it struggles with its present stock of housing and infrastructural facilities to match its new status. Based on a survey of construction professionals’ perception residing within the state, a questionnaire instrument was used to gather the dataset. The statistical exploration contains dataset on the state of housing and urban infrastructural deficit, key indicators spurring the investment by government to upturn the deficit and improvement mechanisms to tackle the infrastructural dearth. Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were used to present the dataset. The dataset when analyzed can be useful for policy makers, local and international governments, world funding bodies, researchers and infrastructural investor

Computer Based Test using Speech Recognition System

Speech recognition system is a system that can converts audio signals into machine-readable format to provide interaction with the system. In this paper the speech recognition system is applied within the E –Learning system.  A headset microphone is interfaced to the computer system for speech production, a speech engine to help analyze each spoken text as programmed in the source code using XML format as the back end for stored text. This technique process data capturing more promptly than the existing process by keyboards or mouse, and can be used in working environment where these devices cannot be used and also for the disable learners that cannot use their hands or communicate through textual medium. Speech Recognition System is a developing technology and its application in this context is done within the Computer-Based Test as a pilot study.  The speech SDK (Software Development Kits) used has an inbuilt speech recognition engine and inbuilt simulator, the engine provides the speech recognizer that is able to recognize the user’s speech and integrate it with the inbuilt simulator. Keywords: Speech Recognition System, Computer Based Test, E-Learning Syste

Improving Employability Skills Through a Web-Based Work Integrated Learning Database for Construction Students

Employability and Unemployment continues to be dire issues that Nigerian youth are faced with daily in a saturated employment market. Whereas, the use of workintegrated learning can help bridge the gap by increasing employability skills among students. The study examined the benefits of having a work-integrated learning (WIL) program for students in the construction field. Therefore, the study developed a framework for improving employability skills through a web-based work integrated learning database for construction students. Using a system block diagram, use case diagram and activity diagram, the study illustrated the functional requirement needed for the development of the WIL platform. The WIL platform is a web-based system pooling submission of available WIL positions from employers in construction businesses and former WIL students in order for prospective WIL students to access possible openings where they can learn in a workplace environment. The methodology of this research includes using the combination of HTML, CSS and the C-Sharp programming language for the interface design and server side scripting while MySQL was the database platform used for storing and retrieving the data used for the application. In conclusion, the study designed a WIL platform for construction students. The use of the WIL platform is intended to encourage employability of construction students by ensuring that they are adequately engaged in a work place training

Trend Analysis of Teenage Pregnancy in Nigeria (1961-2013): How Effective is the Contraceptive Use Campaign

Teenage pregnancy (TP) is a recurrent global and public health problem. It poses both social and health challenges. Considering the massive campaign on the use of modern contraceptives to prevent TP in recent decades, we assessed trends in TP in Nigeria between 1961 and 2013. Pregnancy and contraception history of 70,811 women who were at least 20 years old when the Nigerian DHS was conducted in 1990, 2003, 2008, and 2013 respectively were used for the study, and descriptive statistics, time analysis techniques and multiple logistic regression were used to analyze the data at 5% significance level. The overall prevalence of TP between 1961 and 2013 was 49.5% which fluctuated insignificantly during the studied period. The TP prevalence among women who entered adulthood in 1961 was 39.2%; it peaked in 1978 at 58.9% before its unsteady decline to 39.6% in 2012, and then rose sharply to 55.6% in 2013. We predicted TP prevalence as 49.0%, 49.9% and 51.0% in 2014, 2015 and 2016 respectively. The odds of TP were over 4 times higher in the North East and 5 times higher in the North West than in the South West. Teenagers with no education had higher odds of TP and it was higher among teenagers from the poorest households (OR=5.64, 95% CI: 5.36-5.94). Rather than reducing with the worldwide acknowledged increase in contraceptive campaigns, TP increased over the years studied. As far as TP is concerned in Nigeria, the impact of the campaign on MC use is far from being effective. To achieve the objective of fewer TPs, fewer resources should be spent on access to contraception and instead diverted to areas more likely to achieve results such as improvements in educational achievement amongst girls