Conceptualizing ethnicity and nation building in Malaysia: A lesson from Nigeria

Conflict of ethnic origin keep presenting its ugly consequences to most of the developing and developed societies, with no much lessons learned. This ethnic conflicts usually starts with a mere complain or grievance that is most of the time ignored, this minor issues if not well tackled could metamorphosed into a widespread genocides, killings, maiming, destruction of valuable properties or in a form of social vices, like addiction, armed robbery, prostitution and host of other vices. Hence this paper presents a catalogue of the various ethnic confl icts that occurred in Nigeria from 1999-2002, immediately after the coming up of a democratically elected government in the country. The paper concluded that, the unassuming right provided by the Nigeria democracy might have contributed to the escalation of the conflicts, that has direct relationship with ethnicity. It also presumed that, the conflicts may also be associated with long military dictatorship in the country, which likely socialised the citizens to learn the act of intolerance, hostility and the act of violence. The lessons drawn from Nigeria experience were married with the recent happening in Malaysia, so that it will serve as a lesson to Malaysia to act fast not to allow its issue degenerates to an uncontrollable stage. This paper, therefore, make use of documented records from both official documents and eyewitnesses records to generates all its data and argument for this presentation. “Tribalism is the bane of independent Africa...There are 2,000 language Groups of which 50 are prominent, and countless more subdivisions of tribe and clan.This complex heritage has been only slightly eroded by inter-marriage and the drift to the cities. Nor have the eff orts of African leaders to impose a national identity on their diverse peoples, assembled within borders inherited from colonial days, worked well. African state builders tread a narrow path between the fact of tribal loyalties and the need to minimize inter-tribal hostility.” “Tribalism in Africa,” The Economist (September 10, 1994), pp. 46, 48

Resolving developmental conflict in Africa through bilateral relationship with Asian countries

Bilateral relationship has the potentiality of changing the economic posture and prospect of the African economy. It has the potentiality of resolving the African ethno-religious and communal conflict as well serve as an instrument to galvanize all the abundant resources in Africa and transform them into the nucleus that can bring about socio-economic and political development, create employment opportunities and national integration. This bilateral relationship especially with Asia has a long historical record in Africa specifically with Nigeria, during the regime of late General Murtala Muhammad 1975-1976, the General Muhammad Buhari/Idiagbon regime 1983-1985, General Muhammad Sani Abacha Administration 1993-1998, and of recent the attempt made by the present administration of Alhaji Umaru Musa Yaradua/Goodluck 2007 to date for shifting the economic policy to the Asian continent in search of Nigerian solution to the ailing economy, and the resultant conflict that served as one factor sustaining Nigeria economic instability. This paper is based on deductive, inductive and comparative methods of research which specifically concludes that, it is possible for bilateral relationship with Asian countries, particularly Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore to serve as a platform for resolving ethno-religious conflict and economic instability, an attempt as stated above prove to be very useful as reflected in the history of Nigeria

Evaluation of Policies and Regulations on Plastic Waste Recycling and Its Impact on the Aesthetic of Kaduna Metropolis

Plastic is increasingly replacing metals, glass, ceramics and wood in many products, Plastic is a waste stream with recycling and recovery potential. The rate of recycling is not keeping up with the rate at which virgin plastics are being produced. The study evaluates the policies and regulations on plastic waste management and the resulting impacts on the environment in Kaduna metropolis. The nominal group technique survey approach was adopted to generate data for the study and analysis. 19 participants were involved in the nominal group discussion. The participants were drawn from various disciplines, profession and strata in both the civil service and citizens. The results show that 68% of the participants were male and females recorded 32% of the participants. On whether lack of adequate technical capacity of plastic recycling plants affects collection and disposal of plastic waste in Kaduna metropolis; the result of the NGT ranking showed that the factor of collection capacity challenges was due to lack of technical knowledge of separation at sources. This in a way affects the technical capacity of the few recycling plants in the study area. This aspect was ranked as one of the most impactful factor with a score of 71 points. With regards to impact of policies; the current policies and regulations were considered weak and lame and ranked as a serious factor affecting plastic waste collection, disposal and the aesthetics of Kaduna metropolis with an NGT point score of 84 points. On the impact of recycling, result also showed that the possibility of recycling creating value for the waste thereby making it a resource hence reduction in indiscriminate disposal was considered the most likely major impact plastic waste recycling will bring and was ranked by the stakeholders and got a massive NGT 64 points. The study concludes that plastic waste management in Kaduna metropolis has not advanced as expected. The laws governing plastic waste collection and disposal in the state are weak and enforcement is almost nonexistent. The study recommended new policy guidelines and adequate regulation with capacity for enforcement is required. All stakeholders should be carried along and actively involved in the new policy framework. Keywords: Nominal Group Technique (NGT), Plastic, Waste, Recycling, Aesthetic, Policies DOI: 10.7176/JEES/11-8-05 Publication date:August 31st 2021

Moderating effect of gender and age on the relationship between emotional intelligence with social and academic adjustment among first year university students

This study examined whether emotional intelligence is significantly correlated with social adjustment and academic adjustment. It also explored the moderating effects of gender and age factors and their linked between emotional intelligence and social adjustment as well as academic adjustment among first year university students. 289 first year university students (148 males and 141 females) at the Irbid Govern Orate, North of Jordan, participate in the study and were categorized based on two age groups, younger students between the age of 18 – 25 and older students between the range of 26 and above. Two valid and reliable instruments were used to assess student’s emotional intelligence, social adjustment and academic adjustment. Correlation and multi-group analysis using structural equation model were used to analyse these data. The result shows no significant relationship between emotional intelligence and of both social adjustment and academic adjustment. In addition, the moderating effect of gender was not found. However, the moderating effect of age on the relationship between emotional intelligence with social adjustment and academic adjustment were established

Experimental assessment of the interface electronic system for PVDF-based piezoelectric tactile sensors

Tactile sensors are widely employed to enable the sense of touch for applications such as robotics and prosthetics. In addition to the selection of an appropriate sensing material, the performance of the tactile sensing system is conditioned by its interface electronic system. On the other hand, due to the need to embed the tactile sensing system into a prosthetic device, strict requirements such as small size and low power consumption are imposed on the system design. This paper presents the experimental assessment and characterization of an interface electronic system for piezoelectric tactile sensors for prosthetic applications. The interface electronic is proposed as part of a wearable system intended to be integrated into an upper limb prosthetic device. The system is based on a low power arm-microcontroller and a DDC232 device. Electrical and electromechanical setups have been implemented to assess the response of the interface electronic with PVDF-based piezoelectric sensors. The results of electrical and electromechanical tests validate the correct functionality of the proposed system

An assesment of the performance of reform in Nigeria and Malaysian national health scheme programme

The study assessed the performance of health care and safety services reform in Nigeria and Malaysian National Health Scheme.Survey method of research was adopted using questionnaire as the major tool of data collection.The data collected through the questionnaire method were subjected to Difference-in-Difference econometric statistical model analyses.The aim was to arrive at a conclusion on the comparative analysis of health care reform in the two countries (Nigeria and Malaysia), and as well between two periods (before and after reform). The findings revealed an impressive result supporting health care reform in the two countries.The comparative analysis also revealed a result showing the superiority of Malaysian healthcare reform over that of Nigeria.The result of performance testing of the reform before and after shows that the reform impacted positively on healthcare and safety services delivery to the employees in both Nigeria and Malaysia.The study concludes that, reform is one of the varitable tools to use in improving health care and safety services performance in Nigeria and Malaysia

An assessment of the national health insurance scheme impacts on health care delivery in Nigeria: perspective on total quality management using Nominal Group Technique (NGT)

The early 70’s saw the emergence of new research technique with small number of participant but with more degree of allowance for all to make equal contribution.This technique call Nominal Group Technique (NGT) resolves the issue of dominance of the most vocal member in a focus group.It gave equal opportunity to all participants more than dolphi method.It can easily transform from qualitative to quantitative technique. This study makes use of NGT to assess the success recorded by the NHIS reform in Nigeria.The result shows some level of changes in the way healthcare delivery is being carried out in Nigeria.The results in this research shows an absolute weight of .7 and ranked 13 by the NGT participants showing that NHIS is biased towards urban than rural.The 6% better drugs in the private clinics more than in public signify the system is more functional in the private clinics than public. The result of better treatment was as well not too impressive.The research concludes that the monitoring and evaluation unit of the Federal Ministry of Health, NHIS and HMO should rekindle their effort in making sure that the needed successes are recorded in these three very important areas, genuine drugs, waiting time to see doctors and clinical medical personnel and Better treatments in tandem with the TQM principles and practices

Backpropagation Neural Network Based on Local Search Strategy and Enhanced Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithm for Breast Cancer Diagnosis

The role of intelligence techniques is becoming more significant in detecting and diagnosis of medical data. However, the performance of such methods is based on the algorithms or technique. In this paper, we develop an intelligent technique using multiobjective evolutionary method hybrid with a local search approach to enhance the backpropagation neural network. First, we enhance the famous multiobjective evolutionary algorithms, which is a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II). Then, we hybrid the enhanced algorithm with the local search strategy to ensures the acceleration of the convergence speed to the non-dominated front. In addition, such hybridization get the solutions achieved are well spread over it. As a result of using a local search method the quality of the Pareto optimal solutions are increased and all individuals in the population are enhanced. The key notion of the proposed algorithm was to  show a new technique to settle automaticly artificial neural network design problem. The empirical results generated by the proposed intelligent technique evaluated by applying to the breast cancer dataset and emphasize the capability of the proposed algorithm to improve the results. The network size and accuracy results of the proposed method are better than the previous methods. Therefore, the method is then capable of finding a proper number of hidden neurons and error rates of the BP algorithm

Local Search Based Enhanced Multi-objective Genetic Algorithm of Training Backpropagation Neural Network for Breast Cancer Diagnosis

Recently, several evolutionary algorithms have been proposed on the basis of preference in literature. Most of multi-objective evolutionary algorithms used NSGA-II due to a good performance in comparison with other multi-objective evolutionary algorithms. Our research is focused on enhancement of a well-known evolutionary algorithm NSGA-II by combining a local search method for solving Breast cancer classification problem based on Backpropagation neural network. The use of local search within the enhanced NSGA II operating can accelerate the convergence speed towards the non-dominated front and ensures the solutions attained are well spread over it. The proposed hybrid method has been experimentally evaluated by applying to the Breast cancer classification problem. It has been experimentally shown that the combination of the local search method has a positive impact to the final solution and thus increased the classification accuracy of the results

Backpropagation neural network based on local search strategy and enhanced multi-objective evolutionary algorithm for breast cancer diagnosis

The role of intelligence techniques is becoming more significant in detecting and diagnosis of medical data. However, the performance of such methods is based on the algorithms or technique. In this paper, we develop an intelligent technique using multiobjective evolutionary method hybrid with a local search approach to enhance the backpropagation neural network. First, we enhance the famous multiobjective evolutionary algorithms, which is a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II). Then, we hybrid the enhanced algorithm with the local search strategy to ensures the acceleration of the convergence speed to the non-dominated front. In addition, such hybridization get the solutions achieved are well spread over it. As a result of using a local search method the quality of the Pareto optimal solutions are increased and all individuals in the population are enhanced. The key notion of the proposed algorithm was to show a new technique to settle automaticly artificial neural network design problem. The empirical results generated by the proposed intelligent technique evaluated by applying to the breast cancer dataset and emphasize the capability of the proposed algorithm to improve the results. The network size and accuracy results of the proposed method are better than the previous methods. Therefore, the method is then capable of finding a proper number of hidden neurons and error rates of the BP algorithm