Tax amnesty and economic development in Nigeria

This study investigated the impact of the recent tax amnesty programme implemented by the Nigerian Government, on the country’s economic development using quarterly data from Q1 of 1995 to Q4 of 2018 obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria database and the World Bank development indicators. Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) framework was applied for the data analysis and the result showed that the Tax amnesty program which was implemented between July 2017 and June 2018 has no significant impact on nominal GDP per capita which served as proxy for economic development. However, while company income tax showed no significant impact on nominal GDP per capita, the effects of both custom and excise duties and value added tax extend beyond the current period because value added tax has a negative total effect on nominal GDP per capita whereas the total effect of custom and excise duties is positive. Based on these findings, this study concludes that custom and excise duties significantly influence Nigeria GDP per capita because of the strategy of their implementation and collection while company income tax and VAT do not. In view of the foregoing conclusion, this study recommends that a future tax amnesty program should not be undertaken by the government until it had addressed the critical issues of lack of sufficient data, capacity constraints, inadequate advocacy for tax payment consciousness, corrupt tax officials and lack of political will. The government is also advised not to effect any increase in VAT, but could increase the customs and excise duties because of their respective economic advantage and positive effects on per capita income

Development of Cultism in Secondary Schools in Rivers State (1999-2018): It’s Implications for Educational Development

The development of cultism in secondary schools in Rivers State had severe negative implications on the educational development of students across the State.  Series of measures were undertaken to curtail the proliferation of cultism among secondary school students. However, cultism has proliferated unabated like wide fire in secondary schools in Rivers State. It is against this backdrop that this study was undertaken to examine the development of cultism in secondary schools and its implications on educational development in Rivers State. Three research questions were formulated to guide the study. Data were gathered through secondary sources such as textbooks, journals, Government publications, newspapers, and student’s publications such as dissertations and thesis. The secondary data collected were subjected to content analysis. The study established that illegal collection of levies by the youth, intake of hard drugs by the students, lack of basic needs such as food, shelter, negative influence from the peer group, and teachers’ negative attitude towards their students led to the proliferation of cultism among students in secondary schools in Rivers State. The study also established that the proliferation of cultism has sever negative impact on educational system in Rivers State. It is disastrous to the society in general.   Based on the above findings the study recommended among other things that the government should design poverty alleviation strategies for students such as bursary and scholarship awards. This will enable poverty-stricken students to take care of their immediate personal needs

Automatic Home Appliance Switching Using Speech Recognition Software and Embedded System

In most homes, electrical appliances are controlled and operated manually, this could be difficult and challenging to do when tiredness, handicap, morphological variations (height, aging etc.) and inadequate skill stands in the way as impediment. This study aims to implement a better and more flexible means of controlling home appliances by means of an automated switching mechanism using speech recognition technique. Acoustic signals picked by a microphone controlled by a speech recognition application generate digital signals that are passed to a microcontroller, which in turn dispatches commands that operate the relays to which the appliances in the home are connected. The goal of using speech command to automate the switching of home appliances was achieved and proved to be a more convenient means of switching home appliances

Combined effects of municipal and industrial wastes on the quality of the new northern Calabar River, Nigeria

This study was conducted to investigate the combined effects of municipal and industrial waste discharges on the quality of the new northern Calabar River in the Niger Delta province (5.317°N, 6.467°E) of Nigeria. Water samples were collected in June 2015 from five regions along the stretch of the river. The five regions comprised three observed pollution sources (abattoir, open market, and noodle factory) and two non-pollution sources at the downstream and upstream sections of the river. Using standard analytical protocols, results showed that the current pollution loads of the river varied significantly (p < 0.05) across the three pollution sources. Over 33% of studied quality indicators of the river including total hardness (1526.19±154 mg/l), biochemical oxygen demand (10.14±4 mg/l), and chemical oxygen demand (57.62±13 mg/l) over time increased beyond their permissible limits due to the disposal of municipal and industrial wastes into the river. The present quality of the river was only fair with a Water Quality Index of 64.71. This result suggests that the water quality is usually protected but occasionally impaired by the wastes discharged into the river, leading to conditions that often depart from permissible levels

Utilisation of new media in communicating insecurity in Southeast Nigeria

  This paper aims to describe how in recent times, the issue of insecurity in the southeast of Nigeria is alarming. People are no longer safe as they have become targets for the perpetrators of insecurity within the region. In all of these cases, people must be fully aware of the level of insecurity in a specific location in order to determine the next course of action. In order to achieve this, this study examined the use of new media to communicate insecurity in Southeast Nigeria. The study was founded on the premise of technological determinism.  In this research, a survey research approach was used. Using the Wimmer and Dominick sample size calculator, a sample of 384 was generated from the study's population of 22,012,828. A questionnaire was utilised as a data collection tool. Meanwhile, the multistage sampling procedure was used. Data was analysed with the use of descriptive statistics and pie chart. The finding showed that 51.0% of respondents had been exposed to insecurity messages via new media to a very large extent. It was also revealed that on an average of 74.8% (N=367), new media has been used in communicating insecurity among residents in southeastern Nigeria to a very large extent. It was recommended that new media users should be sensitized on the need to use the platform appropriately or with a sense of responsibility instead of using it to fuel more security problems within the southeastern region of Nigeria.

Restoration of visual function in advanced disease after transplantation of purified human pluripotent stem cell-derived cone photoreceptors

Age-related macular degeneration and other macular diseases result in the loss of light-sensing cone photoreceptors, causing irreversible sight impairment. Photoreceptor replacement may restore vision by transplanting healthy cells, which must form new synaptic connections with the recipient retina. Despite recent advances, convincing evidence of functional connectivity arising from transplanted human cone photoreceptors in advanced retinal degeneration is lacking. Here, we show restoration of visual function after transplantation of purified human pluripotent stem cell-derived cones into a mouse model of advanced degeneration. Transplanted human cones elaborate nascent outer segments and make putative synapses with recipient murine bipolar cells (BCs), which themselves undergo significant remodeling. Electrophysiological and behavioral assessments demonstrate restoration of surprisingly complex light-evoked retinal ganglion cell responses and improved light-evoked behaviors in treated animals. Stringent controls exclude alternative explanations, including material transfer and neuroprotection. These data provide crucial validation for photoreceptor replacement therapy and for the potential to rescue cone-mediated vision

Candidate Genes Detected in Transcriptome Studies Are Strongly Dependent on Genetic Background

Whole genome transcriptomic studies can point to potential candidate genes for organismal traits. However, the importance of potential candidates is rarely followed up through functional studies and/or by comparing results across independent studies. We have analysed the overlap of candidate genes identified from studies of gene expression in Drosophila melanogaster using similar technical platforms. We found little overlap across studies between putative candidate genes for the same traits in the same sex. Instead there was a high degree of overlap between different traits and sexes within the same genetic backgrounds. Putative candidates found using transcriptomics therefore appear very sensitive to genetic background and this can mask or override effects of treatments. The functional importance of putative candidate genes emerging from transcriptome studies needs to be validated through additional experiments and in future studies we suggest a focus on the genes, networks and pathways affecting traits in a consistent manner across backgrounds

UPGro Hidden Crisis Research Consortium : project approach for defining and assessing rural water supply functionality and levels of performance

This technical brief is aimed at sharing the learning and approaches developed by the UPGro Hidden Crisis Research Project to look at how the functionality and performance levels of boreholes equipped with handpumps (HPBs), can be assessed using a common set of definitions and methods. A tiered approach to defining and measuring functionality is found to be useful to examining functionality for different scales and purposes of monitoring. This report is aimed at national and regional actors involved in the provision and monitoring of rural water supply functionality. The brief sets out the tiered functionality definitions, and accompanying survey methods, which were developed by the project and have been applied in functionality surveys across Ethiopia, Uganda and Malawi [5-7]. The brief provides a summary of: • The tiered approach to defining and measuring the functionality and performance levels of boreholes equipped with handpumps (HPBs). • A series of survey methods which were found to be useful by the Hidden Crisis project to collect sufficient data to assess HPB functionality across the tiered definition approach. • A series of guidelines which could form core criteria for assessing functionality and performance levels of water points . This summary should be read in conjunction with the appendices which provide details of the methods and approaches described