Performance assessment in Nigeria’s peasant agriculture: An application of data envelopment analysis on rice producers in Cross River State, Nigeria

The paper investigated the performance of swamp rice producers in Cross River State, Nigeria, in terms of their productive efficiency, using the non-parametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to frontier estimation. Results show that the efficiency levels of rice producers in the region are generally above 65%, on average, under the assumption of variable returns to scale (VRS), thus indicating substantial levels of inefficiency. Of the 95 farmers sampled, 14 were fully technically efficient, while 4 each were fully allocatively and economically efficient (in the VRSsense), thus providing a benchmark for which the inefficient producers could emulate. Allocative inefficiency was the major source of overall inefficiency, while the key cause of technical inefficiency was the problem of sub-optimal scale. Among others, the study recommends that the problem of sub-optimal scale could be addressed by increasing farm sizes of the 77 farms operating at sub-optimal scale to an average of about 0.4 hectares, while that of allocative inefficiency could be alleviated by providing rice producers in the region with information on the cost-minimizing inputmixes of their best-practice peers to enable them become fully allocatively efficient

Evaluating Managerial Skills for Business Education in a Technological Age

Having witnessed the extraordinary development of information technology in recent time, one needs to critically examine some systematic changes it triggered in Business Education. This will go a long way in determining whether Business Education is still relevant in accomplishing its goals such as provision of managerial skills for economic sustainability. Based on the above, the researchers thought it reasonable to evaluate the managerial skills acquired through Business Education in present day technology. The researchers‟ findings revealed that Business Education still has the unique and significant potentials in providing managerial skills needed in handling personal affairs, as well as management of business and skills for gainful employment, but calls for improved provision of needed personnel and equipment such as computer for training the would be managers

Maternal and child health interventions in Nigeria: a systematic review of published studies from 1990 to 2014

BACKGROUND: Poor maternal and child health indicators have been reported in Nigeria since the 1990s. Many interventions have been instituted to reverse the trend and ensure that Nigeria is on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. This systematic review aims at describing and indirectly measuring the effect of the Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (MNCH) interventions implemented in Nigeria from 1990 to 2014. METHODS: PubMed and ISI Web of Knowledge were searched from 1990 to April 2014 whereas POPLINE® was searched until 16 February 2015 to identify reports of interventions targeting Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health in Nigeria. Narrative and graphical synthesis was done by integrating the results of extracted studies with trends of maternal mortality ratio (MMR) and under five mortality (U5MR) derived from a joint point regression analysis using Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey data (1990-2013). This was supplemented by document analysis of policies, guidelines and strategies of the Federal Ministry of Health developed for Nigeria during the same period. RESULTS: We identified 66 eligible studies from 2,662 studies. Three interventions were deployed nationwide and the remainder at the regional level. Multiple study designs were employed in the enrolled studies: pre- and post-intervention or quasi-experimental (n = 40; 61%); clinical trials (n = 6;9%); cohort study or longitudinal evaluation (n = 3;5%); process/output/outcome evaluation (n = 17;26%). The national MMR shows a consistent reduction (Annual Percentage Change (APC) = -3.10%, 95% CI: -5.20 to -1.00 %) with marked decrease in the slope observed in the period with a cluster of published studies (2004-2014). Fifteen intervention studies specifically targeting under-five children were published during the 24 years of observation. A statistically insignificant downward trend in the U5MR was observed (APC = -1.25%, 95% CI: -4.70 to 2.40%) coinciding with publication of most of the studies and development of MNCH policies. CONCLUSIONS: The development of MNCH policies, implementation and publication of interventions corresponds with the downward trend of maternal and child mortality in Nigeria. This systematic review has also shown that more MNCH intervention research and publications of findings is required to generate local and relevant evidence