Commandants' Managerial Capacity and Workers Productivity in Nigeria Police Force Schools

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the commandant's managerial capacity as if relates to workers productivity with a view to determining whether their calling to the education terrain has been justified and to correct certain areas in need of improvement in the Nigeria Police Education set up. In doing this, the study took in to cognizance the managerial process that could lead to high teacher productivity in relation to high academic performance of students The study found out that significant relationship exists between commandant Managerial capacity and teacher productivity with a Pearson correlation value of 0.284 and value of 0.001 level of significance. Other factors like experience and qualifications were found to be necessary pre-requisites for the appointment of heads of schools with chi-square value of 9.712 and p-level of 0.021 significance. Female teachers productivity was found to be lower than that of their male counterparts. In view of the findings, the study made some useful suggestions and recommendations. African Research Review Vol. 1 (3) 2007: pp. 36-5

Generalized and Subset Integrated Autoregressive Moving Average Bilinear Time Series Models

Generalized integrated autoregressive moving average bilinear model which is capable of achieving stationary for all non linear series is proposed and compared with subset generalized integrated autoregressive moving average bilinear model using the residual variance to see which perform better. The parameters of the proposed models are estimated using Newton-Raphson iterative method and Marquardt algorithm and the statistical properties of the derived estimates were investigated. An algorithm was proposed to eliminate redundant parameters from the full order generalized integrated autoregressive moving average bilinear models. To determine the order of the models, Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) were adopted. Generalized integrated autoregressive moving average bilinear models are fitted to Wolfer sunspot numbers and stationary conditions are satisfied. Generalized integrated autoregressive moving average bilinear model performed better than subset generalized integrated autoregressive bilinear model. Keywords: Stationary, Newton-Raphson, Residual Variance, Marquardt Algorithm and Parameters

Supervision and Quality Assurance Strategies in Education: Implication for Educational Policy Making

This paper examines the need for quality assurance and quality control strategies in improving the effectiveness of educational provision and teacher performance in schools. Governments all over the word in an attempt to educate and develop their citizens spend huge amount of money on teachers and schools but in most cases especially in the developing counties the case has been that of continuous falling in the standard and quality of their education. In fact, in some, it is near collapse. This paper found that there is the need for introduction of strategies that would lead to re – engineering of schools and introduction of effective supervisory management of the educational sector. The Paper recommends that an important division of the ministry of education must be empowered and strengthened as a strong driving force to justify the lunge investment on education. African Research Review Vol. 1 (2) 2007: pp. 87-9

Competitive Strategy and Total Quality Management Culture in organizations

This paper discusses the elements of competitive strategy, total quality management culture and productivity improvement and their relationship in producing better outputs of goods and services and individual and organizational performance. Production remains fundamental to the sustenance of human existence. A productive activity is one that contributes (directly/ indirectly) to the satisfaction of people\'s wants. The wants are either material (requiring the use of resources provided by nature) or immaterial (requiring the services of other human beings). Production relations are organized around the three main agents of economic activity, including the household, the firm and the govt. given the natural tendency for population growth, outputs of various production processes have to grow for the levels of Socio-economic welfare to rise or at least be sustained at existing levels. In addition, development requires, among other things, output growth as well as access to increasingly wider ranges of goods and services in any economy. The realization of these presupposes a variety of stimuli. Prominent among the necessities are quality and productivity plus a clear and strong strategy to remain afloat in the industrial competitive market. This paper therefore, examines the concept of total qualitative management in a competitive environment within the contexts of globalizations, deregulation and liberalization. African Research Review Vol. 1 (1) 2007: pp. 55-6

Inflationary Trend in Basic Amenities in Ibadan Oyo State, Nigeria using Price Indices

Trend of inflation was studied using price indices gotten from market survey conducted on the prices of food, clothes and building materials collected from major  markets in Ibadan, Oyo state, Nigeria in 2004 and 2014, 2004 being the base year. The price indices used were Laspeyres’, Paache’s, Fisher’s Ideal (FI) and Dorbey’s and Bowley’s (DB) with emphasis on Fisher’s and DB because of their advantages over others. A well-structured questionnaire was used to collect data on prices of food, clothes and building materials in these markets in 2004 and 2014. The results showed an increase between 40.27 and 460.26% increase in the prices of food items; an increase between 13.93 and 84.04% in the price of food items (provisions) except custard with a reduction of 15%; an increase between 11.2 and 100% in prices of cloths except ankara with less than 8% reduction in price and an increase between 5.9 and 69.7% in the price of building materials. Since price change affects planning, especially when citizen are face with stable income, efforts must be made by relevant authorities to control and stabilize the prices of these commodities. Keywords: Inflation, Basic amenities, Market survey, Price indices, Ibada

Beyond locutionary denotations: exploring trust between practitioners and policy

This study reports the findings of a research on the trust relationship between practitioners in the Skills for Life (SfL) area and the policy that informs their practice. The exploration of this relationship was premised on an extended notion of trust relationship which draws from the Speech Act theory of Austin (1962; Searle 1969; Kissine 2008), leading to the claim that the existence of different layers of imports in textual analysis makes it possible for a trust relationship to exist between the human/physical and the non human/non physical. The study found that the majority of practitioners in the SfL field trust policy to deliver its inherent policy only to a limited extent. Amongst others, the study identified the impact of the perlocutionary import of policy text on practitioners as a viable reason for this limited level of trust. Such perlocutionary imports, it also found, have adverse impact on practitioners who are considered to have drawn from previous experience to mediate the import of contemporary policies

Manpower Planning and Development in the Nigerian Construction Industry

In view of the present competitiveness and the general brain drain across the nations, manpower planning and development are becoming increasingly important within the industry. This paper therefore discussed the current manpower situation in the Nigerian industry with a special emphasis on the construction industry in Nigeria. It began with a broad review of manpower planning and its development. It was revealed that modem manpower management relies upon formal programmes of development for all kinds and levels of employees through training, education and effective communication. It then concluded by highlighting the strategies for effective manpower development in construction industry and the general industry in Nigeria. They include the establishment of easily achievable goal, the development of a set of objectives to assist in the realization of the goal and the formulation · of implementation strategies for each of the objectives.This paper discusses the current manpower situation in the Nigerian industry with a special emphasis on the construction industry in Nigeria. It begins with a broad review of manpower planning and its development. It was revealed that modem manpower management relies upon formal programmes of development for all kinds and levels of employees through training, education and effective communication. It then concludes by highlighting the strategies for effective manpower development in construction industry and the general industry in Nigeria. They include the establishment of easily achievable goal, the development of a set of objectives to assist in the realisation of the goal and the formulation of implementation strategies for each of the objective

English Pronunciation Errors: A Case Study of Amhara and Oromia Regions of Ethiopia

The main goal of this study is oral fluency, that is, the ability to express oneself intelligibly, reasonably, accurately and without too much hesitation without which communication breaks down. In pursuit of this intelligibility between speaker and hearer, the researchers observed through formal and informal settings to find out the deficiencies in the speeches of speakers from the two regions under study that calls for immediate attention. Efforts were made to highlight the pronunciation errors, give possible reasons why they may be occurring and provided plausible solutions. African Research Review Vol. 1 (2) 2007: pp. 160-17

An Improved Control Scheme for Grid-forming Inverters

In order to reduce the reliance of power grids on conventional (and often non-renewable) generation, reliable and dispatchable converter-interfaced distributed generators (DGs) are required. Instead of relying on large rotating machines for frequency and voltage regulation, it becomes crucial to develop improved control schemes for grid-forming inverters. In this paper we propose a simple and effective frequency and voltage control scheme that offers desirable dynamic response and power sharing. The proposed controller is compared to the conventional hierarchical control scheme via a stability analysis of the overall system dynamics and time-domain simulation results. It is shown that the transient performance and the stability properties are significantly improved.ERC starting grant 67977

Distribution of Radionuclide Concentration with Proximity to the Lagoon in Lagos State, Southwestern Nigeria

The radioactivity of Lagos State in the Southwestern Nigeria was determined using an HpGe based, low level passive gamma-counting system. The main radinouclides analyzed in the samples were the progenies of 238U and 232Th. The other two isotopes were the naturally occurring 40K and the anthropogenic 137Cs. The results of the study showed that the average specific activity concentration of 238U, 232Th and 40K have consistent values with published data for many other countries in the world. The presence of the fission product 137Cs could be traced to the fallout of the nuclear tests in the Sahara desert and probably, some effects of the more recent nuclear reactor accident at Chernobyl in 1986. Keyword: radionuclide, concentration, radioactivity, contamination, soi