The Discourse of Arbitration in Pre-Colonial Nigeria: Insights from Igbo Literary Texts

The British Common Law provides an overriding background to human conduct and the dispensation of justice in many Commonwealth nations, including Nigeria. This is without regard to the age-long processes of conducting human affairs in these societies. Indeed, there is this suspicion that the intellectual content and programmatic essence of traditional Nigerian practices, including arbitration procedures, have not been exploited ill the solution to our problems. Modem Nigerian societies do not seem to anchor on our cultural heritage. Thus, issues, including minor ones, tend to be exaggerated, and their outcomes drastic. It is this suspicion that provides justification to this paper. An attempt will be made to discuss arbitration strategies in pre-colonial Igbo society. Emphasis will be on the discourse structure. TllLts, some of the survival strategies of those early societies will be highlighted. Material for the study will be drmvn from literary texts based on pre-colonial Igbo life. There is, however, the assumption that the findings will be relevant to other Nigerian groups

English in the Knowledge Economy: A Study of Mission Statements of Selected Micro-Finance Banks in Lagos State

Mission statements contain aspects of the most strategic information of any business and thus are   central in strategic planning. In entrepreneurship thinking, the capacity to generate realistic mission statements tend to point the way to the future of the organization. Incidentally, there is a suspicion that business enterprises in Nigeria do not maximize the provisions of mission statements. This is the motivation for this study. Our focus has been on the mission statements of selected microfinance banks in Lagos State. In doing this, we purposively selected twenty microfinance banks from one hundred and fifty active ones in Lagos state. The data were subjected to content analysis using the pragma-stylistic framework. It was discovered that the banks studied, did not incorporate the market and public image considerations. The mission statements did not reflect adequate use of technology which is key in a knowledge-based economy. Their focus appeared to have been on the products and services as well as on their self-concept. It is expected that a more robust representation would be needed if mission statements of these microfinance banks would be leveraged upon by budding entrepreneurs

A PHONOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF FLIGHT ANNOUNCERS’ PRONUNCIATION PATTERN AT THE MURTALA MUHAMMED AIRPORT, LAGOS

Hearing an announcement made over the loud speaker in any Nigerian airport leaves most hearers with the impression that the announcer has an excellent command of English. There are however some listeners, mostly travellers that claim that they barely hear or understand what is being announced. This is a serious challenge since air travel is a global phenomenon that requires the highest level of intelligibility. This study thus aims to investigate the pronunciation pattern in the language of flight announcers at the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, in line with the Labov’s theory of Linguistic Variation. Data was elicited from ten flight announcers, through purposive sampling; using a questionnaire and reading test. Output of the reading test was recorded, phonetically transcribed and analyzed using descriptive statistics. The result showed that exposure to native speakers, age of respondents and years of working experience, affects correct pronunciation. It also showed that most flight announcers approximate the English phonemes with what is obtainable in their mother tongue while some others exhibited cases of dialectically influenced personal speech handicap

AN ANALYSIS OF FLIGHT ANNOUNCERS’ LANGUAGE AT THE MURTALA MUHAMMED AIRPORT, LAGOS

Hearing an announcement made over the loud speaker in any Nigerian airport leaves most hearers with the impression that the announcer has an excellent command of English. There are however some listeners, mostly travellers that claim that they barely hear or understand what is being announced. This is a serious challenge since air travel is a global phenomenon that requires the highest level of intelligibility. This study thus aims to investigate the pronunciation pattern in the language of flight announcers at the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, in line with the Labov‟s theory of Linguistic Variation. Data was elicited from ten flight announcers, through purposive sampling; using a questionnaire and reading test. Output of the reading test was recorded, phonetically transcribed and analyzed using descriptive statistics. The result showed that exposure to native speakers, age of respondents and years of working experience, affects correct pronunciation. It also showed that most flight announcers approximate the English phonemes with what is obtainable in their mother tongue while some others exhibited cases of dialectically influenced personal speech handica

A PHONOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF FLIGHT ANNOUNCERS’ PRONUNCIATION PATTERN AT THE MURTALA MUHAMMED AIRPORT, LAGOS

Hearing an announcement made over the loud speaker in any Nigerian airport leaves most hearers with the impression that the announcer has an excellent command of English. There are however some listeners, mostly travellers that claim that they barely hear or understand what is being announced. This is a serious challenge since air travel is a global phenomenon that requires the highest level of intelligibility. This study thus aims to investigate the pronunciation pattern in the language of flight announcers at the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, in line with the Labov’s theory of Linguistic Variation. Data was elicited from ten flight announcers, through purposive sampling; using a questionnaire and reading test. Output of the reading test was recorded, phonetically transcribed and analyzed using descriptive statistics. The result showed that exposure to native speakers, age of respondents and years of working experience, affects correct pronunciation. It also showed that most flight announcers approximate the English phonemes with what is obtainable in their mother tongue while some others exhibited cases of dialectically influenced personal speech handicap

Teaching Aids, Quality Delivery, And Effective Learning Outcomes In A Nigerian Private University

Globally, Universities exist to teach, carry out research and engage in community service. As knowledge centers and major contributors to the manpower resources of the nation's economy, the place of teaching, effective learning and quality delivery should not be underestimated. One of the key performance indicators (KPI) for World University Ranking by the Times Higher Education is teaching. Although teaching involves a series of activities to enhance learning, past studies have shown that students or learners get easily bored with long lecture sessions and worse still retain less than 25 percent of what is taught. Thus, new skills, processes and information intended may not be maximized. There is a suspicion that Universities in most of Africa, including Nigeria may not have appealed to the senses of the students through a multi-modal approach including the use of teaching aids. This study intends to examine the role of teaching aids (gadgets, resources and materials) in enhancing effective teaching outcomes and quality delivery at Covenant University, a Nigerian Private University with a view to drawing some lessons. The study has identified the range of teaching aids and processes adopted by the University in her drive towards the fulfillment of a global mandate of becoming one of the first ten Universities in the world. The study adopts the social learning theory and survey design for data collection. Results from the questionnaire administered to selected teaching staff and students as well as interviews of key personnel of the University formed the basis for conclusions and recommendations in this study. It is intended that the wider sociological, and technological implications will be emphasized just as we position teaching as an aspect of strategic communicatio