Effect of Public Educational Spending and Macroeconomic Uncertainty on Schooling Outcomes: Evidence from Nigeria

This study examines the effect of government educational spending and macroeconomic uncertainty on schooling outcomes in Nigeria using the econometric methods of cointegration and error correction mechanism together with the vector autoregression methodology. The results indicate that schooling outcome cointegrated with all the identified explanatory variables. The study found that public educational spending impacts positively on schooling outcome while macroeconomic instability impacts negatively. The variance decomposition analysis shows that “own shocks” constitute the predominant source of variation in schooling outcome. The impulse response analysis shows that any unanticipated increase in the macroeconomic uncertainty rate will have a contractionary impact on literacy rate. The policy implication of this study is that government should pay attention to policies that enhance educational attainment through adequate public social investment under stable macroeconomic environment.Public spending; education expenditures; education/schooling outcomes; macroeconomic uncertainty.

Corruption and Government Mechanisms In Nigeria: Diagnosis And Treatment

Is widely perceived by many that corruption and other unethical conduct have become a destructive cankerworm that has eaten deep into every nation's economy. Although the scenario is not common only in Nigeria, the manner in which the ill-gotten wealthy individuals were being celebrated in the country is highly alarming. Nigeria is known for its series of anti-corruption mechanisms put in place by the government in order to curtail the menace in society. Upon the establishment of the Military Legislations to curb the menace in 1975 under Generals Murtala Ramatu Muhammed and Olusegun Obasanjo down to 1999 under the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo where two separate anti-corruption bodies were formed (ICPC and EFCC), and to the present Administration under President Muhammadu Buhari where whistleblowing mechanism is introduced, the level of corruption is more pronounced and rampant both in public and private sectors of the Nigeria’s economy. One will be wondering why Nigeria is yet to put total remedies to the scourge of corruption in the country. The study proffers some hints if it can be adopted by the government to strengthen the anti-corruption tools put in place. Some of the measures include the inclusion of individuals, all and sundry in the fight against corruption. As opined by the collective action theory employed by the study, corruption cannot be fought and won in isolation but requires collective efforts and change of masses’ orientation on the need to return sanity back to Nigeria. Similarly, our religious and traditional leaders have numerous roles to play in reducing unethical conduct in society. Conferment of religious or traditional titles to those that do not deserve it in society should be corrected and discouraged in its totality. When these and many more are done, there is every possibility that Nigeria will be a lesser corrupt country and great again. Keywords: Nigeria, EFCC, Whistle-blowing, Corruption, Unethical Conducts

Assessment of Advertising on the Sales Revenue and Profitability of Nigerian Bottling Company Plc

This study evaluates the effectiveness of advertising expenses on the sales revenue and profitability of Nigerian Bottling Company Plc. This study is based on secondary data collected for advertising expenditure, sales revenue and profitability of Nigerian Bottling Company Plc over the period of 1996 to 2009 from the annual report and accounts of the company under study. Among the objectives of the study is to evaluate the extent of the effect of   advertising on the sales revenue of the company. Correlational and regression analysis study designs were adopted for the study. The contribution of the first hypothesis has found that advertising expenses has depicted significant relationship between advertising and the sales revenue of the company. Furthermore, the second hypothesis result has shown that advertising has no significant effect on the profitability of the company. This study concluded that advertising is considered as one of the most important medium of communication influencing the company’s performance in more than one ways. But its influential strategic important could be suppressed by other factors which also try to receive equal attention at time of deciding any sales and profitability strategy. It is therefore recommended that not only advertising should be given adequate attention while formulating strategies relating to sales revenue and profitability promotion policy. Other factors which are crucial to increase sales revenue and profitability such as; sales promotion, personal selling, publicity etc which are crucial should be considered. Keywords: Advertising, Expenditure, Profitability, Revenue, and Promotion Policy

Characterization of NBTI-induced single- and double-stranded DNA breaks mediated by Neisseria gonorrhoeae type II topoisomerases

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Impact of Arabic Language, Religious Fundamentalisms and Globalization

This paper shall look into Religion, fundamentalism and globalization, the introduction, the meaning of Religion, the term fundamentalisms and globalization which presents a number of problems to the scholars of religion, both inclusivity and cultural explanations for religious phenomena have found themselves under attack from a number of fundamentalisms that have appeared in most of the worlds major faith traditions with growing popularity throughout the latter half of the twentieth century in particular strongly critical of pluralism, each fundamentalisms has developed and exclusive truth-claim, Chris partridge, on the other hand, takes a view that ‘fundamentalisms’ does not do justice to the diversity of religious traditions and their own unique historical development. Some scholars have attempted to define ‘fundamentalism’ more precisely than the popular usage of the term, these scholars tend to take two approaches. They either attempt to identify a more penetrating understanding of the phenomenon by seeking to define it or, alternatively, they provide a list of common features. The Hadden and Schupe, two sociologist of religion in 1989 provided the following definition: a pattern of contemporary socio-political movement” that share certain characteristics in their response to a common globalization process. The paper shall also look at an approach to fundamentalisms, which reactive to marginalization of religion especially secularation, selectivity, moral dualism, absolutism millennialism. Niels Nielsen consider that fundamentalist version of religious truth-claims are ‘first and foremost a negative response to what is seen as the spectre of modernity (Nielsen, 1993, p.3)

The Scourge of Hiv/Aids Pandemic and Economic Performance: The Case Of Nigeria

The early 1980s marked the beginning of a new devastating chapter in the global epidemic history when the first case of HIV AIDS was reported in the United States In Nigeria the case of the disease was first reported in 1986 and since then the pandemic has continued to spread moving from a concentrated epidemic to a generalized one with its concomitant effects on the economic performance of the country This study analyzed the impact of the scourge of HIV AIDS menace on the macroeconomic outcomes in Nigeria Engle Granger Two-Stage Estimation Procedure was used to determine the long-run relationship between real GDP and the explanatory variables which included HIV AIDS The time series data utilized covered the period 1990 to 2010 Two models were estimated The first model made use of HIV prevalence while the second model adopted the log of number of persons living with HIV AIDS in Nigeria Having found that the variables were cointegrated OLS estimations were conducted on both models The result of model one showed that HIV prevalence has negative but statistically insignificant impact on real GDP Model two s result revealed that HIV AIDS has negative and statistically significant impact on the growth of the economy of Nigeria in the long-run A 100 percent increase in the number of persons living with the pandemic led to a 19 percent reduction in the level of real GDP The adjusted R2 of 97 percent demonstrated a good fit and a strong explanatory power of the model The conclusion drawn from the study based on the result of model two was that HIV AIDS has significant and negative impact on the economic growth of Nigeria The implication of this is that the macroeconomic impact of the disease in Nigeria will be noticeable and significant as the disease progresses Therefore substantial and sincere efforts should be geared towards combating it to avert its negative consequences on the growth of the nation s economy mortality and morbidity rates aver

Impact of IFAD – Community Based Agriculture and Rural Development Programme on the Farm Incomes of the Marginalized and Vulnerable Participants and Non-Participants in Katsina State, Nigeria

The objective of the study was to evaluate the impact of IFAD – Community Based Agriculture and Rural Development Programme on farm incomes of the marginalized and vulnerable participants in Katsina State. Multistage sampling technique was used in selecting 432 respondents for this study. Primary data were collected using a structured questionnaire and data collected was based on 2002  and 2015 cropping seasons, the year for before was 2002 and after was 2015. The structured questionnaire was pre-tested before it was administered to the farmers that were sampled.  The tools of analysis employed to analyze the data were double difference model and paired t-test. The results of double difference estimator revealed that IFAD-CBARDP had a positive impact on the participant’s farm income based on the positive mean value of ₦ 3696.176 with the farm income of the participants significantly different from that of the non-participants at 5% level of significance. It was concluded that the IFAD-CBARDP has achieved its goal of increasing the farm incomes of the participants in the period of study and has succeeded in targeting the marginalized and vulnerable participants in its farm technical efficiency. Keywords: Impact, IFAD-CBARDP, farm income, katsin

Diffusion of agile supply chains attributes: a study of the UK upstream oil and gas industry cluster

This study examines agile supply chain capabilities in oil and gas clusters, in the light of cluster and industrial district theory. The aim is to provide evidence of their potential impact on competitiveness and business performance within the UK upstream oil and gas cluster. Agility is the ability of organisations to operate and prosper in market conditions characterised by dynamism and constantly changing customer tastes. Clusters and industrial districts refer to the geographic concentration of firms in an industry that enables the firms to benefit from competition and cooperation as well as enhanced productivity within the cluster.A review of past theoretical and empirical studies on supply chain management, agility and clusters identifies four dimensions of agility: customer enrichment, cooperating to compete, mastering change and uncertainty, and leveraging the impact of people and information. The cluster theory points to the competitive advantage of being in geographic proximity to the members of a supply chain, including enhanced productivity, easy access to enriched and high quality factors of production, reduction of transaction and transportation costs as well as increased innovativeness. These all contribute to improving the competitive capability of a firm as well as having impact on the business performance of organisations. A survey of 880 firms in the UK upstream oil and gas cluster was conducted to determine the specific impact of cluster location attributes on the agility of supply chains. Six case studies involving the three tiers of the supply chain and supporting organisation were carried out.Structural equation modelling revealed strong impact of clusters on competitive objectives but weak impact on business performance. Results from the survey show that cluster agility has strong impact on both competitive objectives and business performance. The case study revealed that agility is a strategic tool adopted by the smaller organisations within the supply chain to mitigate the scale of large organisations. Equally, SMEs consider that being in UK oil and gas cluster enhances their responsiveness

An intelligent System for Soil Classification using Supervised Learning Approach

Agriculturist or farmers collect soil sample that are later analyzed for proper classification. This conventional procedure is labour intensive, time consuming and expensive. In this research work, an attempt was made to develop an intelligent system that can identify different types of soil in a particular location using the available hyperspectral data at such location with supervised learning approach. The system was developed using fuzzy –C means to identify the cluster centre. The cluster center was used as an input to train KSOM and generate soil prediction map as an output. ANFIS was eventually used to identify each class of the soil using the soil predictor map as an output during the training stage. The system was implemented using R programming Language. Keywords: Hyperspectral data, C-Means Clustering, KSOM, ANFIS, Supervised Learning, Intelligent System