Occupational practice and problems of artisanal fisherfolk in Oyan dam area of Ogun State

Artisanal Fish Societies constitutes one of the poorest societies in the developing world. Attempts to harness the potentials of such societies have often failed due to the enormity of the problem of poverty. This study was conducted in four major fishing villages namely: Abule Titun, Apojola, Imala Odo and Ibaro in order to investigate the occupational practices and the problems of rural artisanal fisherfolks in Oyam's Dam, area of Ogun State. Eighty respondents were randomly selected among the artisanal fisher folks for interview using interview guide. The findings revealed that 43.8% of the fisherfolks are within active age range of 31-40 years while 30% are within 21-30 years range. Also 31% had no formal education indicating a relatively high level of illiteracy among the fisherfolks while majority of the respondents practice fishing activities using paddle and canoe. It was similarly discovered from the study that the most pressing problems of the fishfolks is the lack of basic social amenities like electricity, potable water, access roads, hospital and markets. It is therefore recommended that basic social infrastructures be provided for the artisanal fishing communities in order to improve their social welfare, standard of living and the capacity to have a sustainable fishing occupation in the interest of food security and poverty alleviatio

Occupational practices and problems of rural artisanal fisherfolks in Oyan Dam area of Ogun State

Artisanal Fish Societies constitutes one of the poorest societies in the developing world. Attempts to harness the potentials of the societies have often failed due to the enormity of the problem of poverty. This study was conducted in four major fishing villages namely; Abule titun, Apojola, Imama Odo and Ibaro in order to investigate the occupational practices and the problems of rural artisanal fisherfolks in Oyam's Dam, area of Ogun State. Eighty respondents were randomly selected among the artisanal fisher folks for interview using interview guide. The findings revealed that 43.8% of the fisherfolks are within active range of 31-40 years while 30% are within 21-30 years range. Also 31% had no formal education indicating a relatively high level of illiteracy among the fisherfolks while majority of the respondents practice fishing activities using paddle and canoe. It was similarly discovered from the study that the most pressing problems of the fisherfolks is the lack of basic social amenities like electricity, potable water, access roads, hospitals and markets. It is therefore recommended that basic social infrastructures be provided for the artisanal fishing communities in order to improve their social welfare, standard of living and the capacity to have a sustainable fishing occupation in the interest of food security and poverty alleviatio

Rulers against Writers, Writers against Rulers: The Failed Promise of the Public Sphere in Postcolonial Nigerian Fiction

Various literary critics have dwelt on the nature, tenets and trends of commitment in Nigeria literature. However, there is paucity of scholarly studies on the representations of the failed promise to the public sphere in postcolonial Nigerian fiction. This paper, therefore, examines the strategies and technicalities of representing the castrated hope of the public sphere in postcolonial Nigerian fiction, using the templates provided by Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah, Ben Okri’s The Famished Road and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus. The methodology involves a close reading of the selected texts, using Jürgen Habermas’s concept of the Public Sphere as the theoretical framework. The paper reveals that the context of the texts (Nigeria) lacks the public sphere, which is supposed to provide a liminal space between the private realm of civil society and the family, as well as the sphere of public authority. This is disclosed in the refusal of the characters to disregard ‘status altogether’ (Habermas 1991:36)

Postcolonial Writings and Transgression of Boundaries: Reading Caryl Phillips’s Crossing the River as a Dialogic Text

Although Caryl Phillips’s Crossing the River has received considerable critical attention, the focus has been mostly on the issue of diasporic/exilic consciousness in the novel. However, its dialogic strain, the constant, endless intentional and value-laden dialogue intowhich it enters has not been adequately recognized. This critical gap forms the focus of this essay, whose central thesis is that a close reading of Crossing the River will demonstrate the untapped potential of Bakhtin’s dialogic theory for interpreting the spirit and the structureof this novel which coalesces genres, geographical spaces, historical events, languages, cultures, philosophies and beliefs to produce a ‘communal’, many-voiced text that crosses a number of borders and transgresses multiple boundaries. This is in line with Stuart Hall’sargument that fictional recreations of history and identity in postcolonial literature often rely on appropriate narrative techniques that can capture and foreground the complexity and enormity of the peoples’ experiences. In Hall’s words: “The past is always constructedthrough memory, fantasy, narrative, and myth” (1996:13). This paper, therefore, examines the strategies employed by Phillips to negotiate the narration of the phenomenon of slavery in his novel, Crossing the River

Evaluation of nutritional characteristics of corn stored in metallic silos

This study assessed the nutritional quality attributes of maize (Zea mays) stored in metallic silos for a period of eight months in the humid tropics of Nigeria. The nutritional properties (NP) evaluated are percentage ash content (AC), crude fibre (CF), crude protein (CP), carbohydrate content (CHO), fat content (FC), and energy value (EV). The initial or control values were compared with the values obtained during storage. Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS 20) was used to determine the significant levels of data while the Multiple Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and Duncan’s multivariate test were used to determine the trend of deterioration (P<0.05) for all the values. The minimum and maximum average temperatures during storage were 29oC in July (wet season) and 34.7oC in April (dry season) respectively. The minimum and maximum average relative humidities during the storage period were 51% in March (dry season) and 71% in May (wet season) respectively. The mean deviation of FC, CP, AC, CHO, CF and EV are 7.25%±1.00%, 8.79%±0.87%, 3.5%±0.88%, 63.36%±0.99%, 6.25%±0.96% and 361.55%±1.00% respectively for the control in respect of the position of the grain in the bulk. FC, CP, AC, and CF decreases from 7.0% to 1.2%, 8.79% to 6.33%, 3.5% to 2.3% and 6.25% to 3.21% respectively during storage while the values CHO and EV increases from 63.36% to 83.2% and 360 kcal to 395 kcal during the storage

Manipulative Use of Short Messaging Service (SMS) Text Messages by Nigerian Telecommunications Companies

This paper is an application of Relevance Theory for the interpretation of short messaging service (SMS) text messages emanating from Nigerian telecommunications companies to their subscribers. The aim of the research was to identify and describe the manipulative strategies employed by Nigerian telecommunications companies to induce subscribers to part with their money through sales promotion lotteries. 100 SMS texts were purposively extracted from the cell phones of randomly selected residents of Lagos Nigeria who had received promotional SMS text messages from three major Nigerian telecommunications companies. Using Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory (1995) as its theoretical framework, the paper described the manipulative use of SMS by Nigerian telecommunications companies. The analysis revealed that SMS text messages were encoded to achieve maximization of relevance through explicature and implicature; contextual implication and strengthening; and the reduction of processing effort through violating the maxim of truthfulness and the creative use of graphology. The paper concludes that SMS text-messages were used manipulatively by Nigerian telecommunications companies to earn indirect income from sales promotion lottery

Comparative Analysis of XML Schema Languages for Improved Entropy Metric

The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is a data set to represent data in a format that is both human readable and machine readable. For XML documents to provide understanding about data exchange between applications, XML schema documents should be validated against the schema language. Most existing schema metrics were implemented differently in Document Type Definition (DTD), XML Schema Definition (XSD) and Regular Language for Next Generation (RNG) but never compare XML schema languages on any metric. Hence this paper compared three different schema languages on Improved Entropy Metric (IEM) using the Number of Attributes (NA), Number of Equivalence Class (NEC), Frequency Occurrence of Class (FOCi) and Number of Elements (NE). The proposed metric was applied on real schemas documents data are acquired from Web Service Description Language (WSDL) and implemented in DTD, XSD and RNG. The result showed that RNG reduce complexity of class elements, reflect strong support for class elements to appear in any order which showed more reusability and flexibility traits and overall understanding of the schema documents becomes much easier because RNG can be algorithmically converted and partner with other schema languages therefore this reduces maintenance effort. Keywords— XML Schema Language, Schema Documents, Schema Metric

Effect of Compensation Strategy on Corporate Performance: Evidence from Nigerian Firms

Compensation Strategy is seen as one of the most important strategies in the human resource management function as it influences the productivity and growth of an organization. Recently, numerous special journal issues have emerged on compensation, often focusing on organization differences. Examples include: the "New Economics of Personnel" (Journal of Labor Economics, October 1997), "The Economics of Human Resource Management", (Industrial Relations, Spring 1998) and "Do Compensation Policies Matter? An Industrial and Labor Relations Review, February 1990). The Brookings Institution (Blinder, 1990) has also published series of papers by scholars in the management field that reviewed the effectiveness of pay programs such as profit sharing, employee ownership, and so forth. Despite these research efforts, there is little debate about whether employees’ pay has any significant linkage with performance. (see also Gerhart and Milkovich ,1990). Thus, in the present study, we tried to link compensation with performance using selected firms in Nigeria as a case study. We specifically covered three conglomerates in Nigeria. The choice of this case study was not unconnected with the fact that these companies are among the largest employers of labour in the manufacturing industry in Nigeria. Using the cross-sectional data analysis, we found that compensation strategy has the potential beneficial effects of enhancing workers’ productivity and by extension improving the overall organizational performance. Therefore, the significance of compensation cannot be overemphasized in an organization and is in fact a veritable option for attracting, retaining, and motivating employees for improved organizational productivity. This finding further enriches the literature supporting that a higher pay guarantees a higher productivity and vice-versa. Key Words: Compensation; Job Evaluation; Workers’ Productivity; Competitive Advantage; Organizational Performance