Impact of human capital development on economic growth: Empirical evidence from Nigeria

The human capital development of a country is measured using health and education. The need to provide healthy and competent manpower for nation development has been at the forefront of policy makers especially in developing countries. There have been public outcries over the poor funding of health and education sectors in Nigeria. Though, there are a lot of literature's on the impact of government expenditure on economic growth but consensus has not been reached from empirical findings about the nature of the relationship. It is on this note the study examined the impact of government sectoral expenditure on economic growth using evidence from ARDL approach. The study used secondary data sourced from CBN statistical bulletin from 1981-2017. The study adopted ARDL and bound testing econometric approach. The ARDL short run result revealed that government health expenditure (GHEXP) has inverse and insignificant effect on economic growth (RGDP). In addition, government education expenditure (GEEXP) revealed positive but insignificant effect on economic growth for the period under study. However, the result from the long run bound testing was declared inconclusive in line with the bound testing decision criteria. The study recommended among other things that government should improve the funding of education in order to provide quality and affordable education for the citizens so as to produce competent manpower that will contribute to the economic growth in Nigeria

An assessment of factors responsible for voter apathy in Africa: Empirical evidence from 2019 Nigerian presidential election

Nigeria is a heterogeneous country which is known for her ethnic and cultural diversity. The need to involve citizens in the business of governance is one of the reasons that inform the modern democratic thinking. Unfortunately, Nigeria has recorded military intervention since the country gained independence in 1960 not until 1999 till date that the country has been experiencing stable democracy without military intervention. After the country returned to civil rule in 1999 during the fourth republic, the country has recorded uninterrupted democratic governance for over two decades. Though, not without some hindrances and one of these challenges is voter apathy which has been on an increase in every election. In 2003, the number of voter turnout was 69.1% of registered voters and unfortunately, the last election that was held in 2019 saw a total decline in voter turnout to 34.75% as reported by the election umpire. The decline in voter turnout has been consistent since 2003 and this continuous drop in the voter turnout informed this research study to examine the factors responsible for low voter turnout in Nigeria for the period of 2003-2019. The theoretical framework adopted for the study was Rational Choice Theory (RCT). To achieve the aim of this study, the study adopted cross sectional survey research design and relied on primary source of data through the help of structured questionnaire. The result obtained from administered questionnaire was analyzed using descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation. The results revealed among other things that one of the major factors responsible for low voter turnout in Nigeria is lack of fulfillment of campaign promises by the political office holders. The study recommended among other things that there should be proper sensitization of electorates by necessary stakeholders and other relevant authorities by encouraging electorates to use their power judiciously by voting out candidates who fail to fulfill campaign promises as this will serve as deterrent for other political aspirants

Conformal Blocks for admissible representations in SL(2) current algebra

We show how to deal with screening charges involving fractional powers of free fields. This enables us to use the free field Wakimoto construction to obtain complete expressions for integral representations of conformal blocks for N-point functions on the sphere, also in the case of non-integrable representations, in particular for admissible representations. We verify several formal properties including the Knizhnik-Zamolodchikov equations. We discuss the fusion rules which result from our treatment, and compare with the literature.Comment: 30 pages, LaTe

Rings of skew polynomials and Gel'fand-Kirillov conjecture for quantum groups

We introduce and study action of quantum groups on skew polynomial rings and related rings of quotients. This leads to a ``q-deformation'' of the Gel'fand-Kirillov conjecture which we partially prove. We propose a construction of automorphisms of certain non-commutaive rings of quotients coming from complex powers of quantum group generators; this is applied to explicit calculation of singular vectors in Verma modules over U_{q}(\gtsl_{n+1}). We finally give a definition of a $q-$connection with coefficients in a ring of skew polynomials and study the structure of quantum group modules twisted by a $q-$connection.Comment: 25 page

Free field realization of SL(2) correlators for admissible representations, and hamiltonian reduction for correlators

Talk presented by J.L. Petersen at the 29th Symposium Ahrenshop, Buckow August 29-September 2, 1995. A presentation is given of the free field realization relevant to SL(2) WZW theories with a Hilbert space based on admissible representations. It is known that this implies the presence of two screening charges, one involving a fractional power of a free field. We develop the use of fractional calculus for treating in general such cases. We derive explicit integral representations of $N$-point conformal blocks. We show that they satisfy the Knizhnik-Zamolodchikov equations and we prove how they are related to minimal conformal blocks via a formulation of hamiltonian reduction advocated by Furlan, Ganchev, Paunov and Petkova.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, article.sty, espcrc2.st

Home Visitation Effectiveness on Students’ Academic Performance During COVID-19 Pandemic

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, traditional classroom instruction is being displaced with online learning. So the students are learning alone, without their parents or elders. Like home visits, schools undertake interventions to ensure that students continue to study and receive a quality education. This study on the effectiveness of the home visitation program on the academic performance of grade seven students during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study revealed that the majority of students were thirteen years old, male, their parents’ occupations were fishing and farming, and with four siblings in the family. They have just a satisfactory academic performance across the different learning areas. However, there were problems encountered that have been identified by the parents and students in the implementation of home visitation such as the poor attitude and motivation towards studies of the learners, poor foundation skills, and family-related problems. The students and parents both agreed on the level of effectiveness of the home visitation intervention program. Lastly, the study disclosed that there was no statistically significant difference in perceptions of the effectiveness of the home visitation intervention program between students and their parents. Keywords: distance learning, home visitation, Challenge DOI: 10.7176/JEP/13-5-07 Publication date: February 28th 202