CHRISTIAN AGRICULTURAL COOPERATIVE: A CATALYST FOR AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION IN TIVLAND, CENTRAL NIGERIA, 1980s – 2020

Agricultural economists, agribusiness scholars, historians, political scientists, economists, geographers, and scholars of various disciplinary orientations have comprehensively interrogated issues of agricultural production in Tivland in Central Nigeria. However, these intellectual inquiries have not x-rayed directly on the contributions of Christian Agricultural Cooperative (CAC) to agricultural production in Tivland. This paper thus serves as an intervention by focusing on the role of CAC as a catalyst to agricultural production in the study area between 1980 and 2020. With the aid of extant literature and oral sources in line with the interdisciplinary method, the paper discusses the phenomena under consideration. In doing this, the study traces the historical foundations of CAC in the study area. Besides, the paper examines the roles and challenges of CAC in agricultural production in Tivland within the study period. It is the opinion of this paper that weak leadership/poor management and paucity of funds were the major forces that weaken the CAC and agricultural production in the focal area. The study concludes that leadership and membership of this cooperative should be able to study and understand the doctrines or tenets of cooperative and also register with National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS) to be able to receive assistance if the threat of failure arises

African theology and African Christology: Difficulty and complexity in contemporary definitions and methodological frameworks

There is an ongoing challenge in defining African theology because of two important reasons: (1) the quest for a definitive African theology is a fairly recent pursuit and (2) the vastness and diversity of the African continent. Given this, this article presents the complexity of defining African theology and its methodological approaches through a background sketch of the development of African theology. Regardless of many definitions of African theology and its purposes, the article acknowledges African Christian theology as theology that should be derived from the interplay between Scripture, Christian tradition and African cosmology. In deriving theology from the aforementioned aspects, African theology should also seek to develop contextual African theologies with global relevance. In this way, African theology can claim its space in the universal church. Although we are conscious of the values and challenges associated with the task of doing African theology, we argue for its necessity. We further argue that if the centrality of Scripture is maintained in the African theological endeavour, it will cause African theologies to have some shared reference point with other Christian theologies and hence engaging globally, while contributing unique African perspectives to global theological discourse

Salvation in Acts 16: Meaning and missional implication derived from the sociohistorical method

In Acts 16:17, a slave girl proclaims: ‘these men are the servants of the Most High God who have come to show a way of salvation!’ The Philippian jailer in Acts 16:30 asks, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ What do they have in common regarding their understanding of the meaning of salvation? How is it similar or different from the understanding of salvation in Africa? Are these in line with the salvation narrative aim of Luke in Acts 16? Through the sociohistorical method, this paper explores the Greco-Roman context of the slave girl and the jailer. In this process, a contextual similarity between the Greco-Roman context and the African context is identified and the impact of these contexts on the understanding of the meaning of salvation is examined. Placed in conversation with the Lukan meaning of salvation in the passage, an alternative meaning of salvation emerges, along with implications for the Greco-Roman and African contexts. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article shows interdisciplinarity by an engagement with a theological concept through the utilisation of the sociohistorical method in generating meaning and understanding of a New Testament text. It navigates the disciplines of New Testament, Biblical Studies, Mission and Apologetics

EFFECT OF LAGOON AND FRESH WATERS ON THE COMPRESSIVE AND SPLIT TENSILE STRENGTH OF GRADE 40 CONCRETE

of Lagoon water and fresh water on compressive and split tensile strength of concrete. A total specimen of 10 cubes and 10 cylinders including specimens for reference concrete were cast for both mixes and exposed to 28 days period of curing. The concrete samples was fully submerged in the lagoon and cured for 28days. For this concrete cubes and cylinders were cast with Portland limestone cement of 42.5-R using fresh water and cured using both fresh water and lagoon water.The result showed that the average compressive strength of concrete obtained using fresh water was 42.6N/mm2 compared to 36.4N/mm2 of Lagoon water and the average split tensile strength of concret