Corporate Governance-Firm Performance Relationship: Empirical Evidence from African Countries. A Principal Components Analysis

This study investigated the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance, with evidence from Africa countries. The review of empirical studies from African countries had established a relationship between corporate governance and firm performance without consensus on a particular kind of relationship; while the result of the analysis using data on the return on assets, returns on equity, price earnings ratio, Tobin’s Q and constructed Performance Index as measures of firm performance and ownership structure as a measure of corporate governance revealed that corporate governance has a positive significant relationship with firm performance in Nigeria. The study concluded that though the agency costs of firms are very high, sound corporate governance is usually responsible for the positive performance of firms across African countries. Keywords: Corporate Governance, Agency theory, Firm Performance. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-17-07 Publication date:June 30th 202

Extreme hyperkalaemia secondary to malignant ureteric obstruction: Case Report

We report a case of a 42 year old patient who collapsed at an airport departure lounge. The patient was investigated and found to have advanced renal failure with serum potassium (K+) of 10.3 mmol/L, creatinine of 3581 µmol/L and urea of 59.9 mmol/L secondary to obstructive uropathy due to advanced bladder cancer. Although these biochemical changes were thought to be incompatible with life, he made a slow recovery following haemodialysis and insertion of bilateral percutaneous nephrostomy tubes. The East African Medical Journal Vol. 83 (11) 2006: pp. 637-64

Microfinance Banks and Entrepreneurship Development in Nigeria: A Case of Ogun State

The purpose of this study was to determine how microfinance impacts on entrepreneurship development in Nigeria with a special reference to Ogun State. The survey research design was adopted and data collected through questionnaires. The impact of microfinance on entrepreneurship development in Nigeria was analyzed using the Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression method. The study revealed the existence of positive relationship between microfinance and entrepreneurship development in Nigeria. It further revealed that microfinance contribute to entrepreneurial activities that can lead to sustainable development in Nigeria. The findings of this study show that microfinance institutions go a long way in the determination of the level of entrepreneurial productivity and development in the Nigerian economy. In order to enhance entrepreneurship which is a potent instrument of activating the economic growth in developing countries, job creation, wealth creation, poverty eradication, innovations, and its related welfare effects by microfinance, the study recommended that in order to enable the beneficiaries of micro finance schemes to fully appreciate the utility of the facility, the monetary authority (CBN) must continue to appraise the credit delivery channels and formulate policies that would facilitate the delivery of the facilities to the rural communities. Microfinance institutions need to put in more effort in financing entrepreneurial activities that can promote economic growth accessible to the poor, reform of the legal system to offer more protection to investors and creditors and also establishment of credit information exchange mechanism that would track all borrowings and repayments in the banking system no matter the size. Key words: Entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, microfinance bank, microfinance, loan

Dividend Policy and Share Price Valuation in Nigerian Banks

This study examined dividend policy and share price valuation in the Nigerian banks. The study which covered a ten-year period made use of secondary data sourced from published financial statements of four major banks in Nigeria, namely; Access Bank, First Bank, United Bank for Africa and Guarantee Trust Bank. The study employed the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression model in the analyzing the data obtained. Findings from the study show that a significant positive relationship exist between earnings per share and market price. The study concluded that banks should put in place efficient and robust dividend policy and leverage on the new e-dividend payment initiative for a better performance. An amendment should be carried out on Company and Allied Matter Act (CAMA) 2004 as amended to compel any company with a total asset value in excess of N10billion to be listed on the Nigerian capital market with a view to attracting more investor

Evaluation of Full Text Search Retrieval System

With a number of search engines on the web and each with different indexing and ranking methods and different coverage, finding the one that gives the best results for a query becomes a bit challenging. The main problem however, that existing Search engines have to deal with is how to avoid irrelevant information and to retrieve the relevant ones. This current work presents a new approach for retrieving relevant information on the Web, by adopting breadth-First search algorithm. The implementation result of the retrieval system was analysed using recall and precision model for three departments at Elizade University. By learning from users’ behaviour, the approach can return very high quality search results, with a strongly reduced computing load

Laboratory Evaluation of Insecticidal Activities of Some Botanicals against Four Insect Pests of Honey Bees (Apis mellifera L.)

The study evaluated the effectiveness of methanol, n-hexane and aqueous leaf extracts of Ocimum gratissimum, Carica papaya, Tithonia diversifolia, Ageratum conyzoides and Azadirachta indica in the management of four insect pests of honeybees namely; acrobat ant (Crematogaster lineolata), small hive beetle (Aethina tumida), lesser wax moth (Achroia grisella) and greater wax moth (Galleria mellonella) in the laboratory. Test of contact toxicity of the extracts was conducted by topical application of 2 ml of treatments at 10% w/v on five insects using standard method. Repellency study of the extracts was conducted using an area of preference test. N-hexane extracts of all the plants caused 100% mortality of all the insects within 6 hour. Methanol extract caused between 90% and 100% mortality of all the insects except A. tumida. Aqueous extract of all the plants cause 100% mortality of C. lineolata, but induce no mortality of A. tumida. Mortality of other insects treated with aqueous extracts of the plants varied between 15% and 100%. The % repellence of A. grisella by plant extracts and cypermethrin varied between 45% and 90% and were not significantly (p>0.05) different from each other, while that of A. tumida varied between 35% and 78%. The n-hexane and methanol extracts of the five plants had repellence and insecticidal effects on the four insect pests of bees and could be considered as bioactive candidate for management of the insects