Secular Nationalism and Religious Orthodoxy in a Globalized Economy: An Overview of Pre and Post Revolutionary Years in Iran

The obvious endurance of the Iranian government, in spite of the age-long sustained western opposition to her perceptible radical religious and political posturing, regionally and globally, remains a seemingly enigmatic phenomenon requiring some insight. Against this backdrop, and keeping in view contemporary Arab agitation for reforms; agitations which have resulted in political instability in the Middle-East and North Africa sub-region, vis-à-vis the realities of Iranian influence in the entire sub-region, this paper re-assesses the Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution and its government in Iran. The paper unravels the revolution and the emergent government as a model of religious orthodoxy. The West’s criticism of her human rights record and the agitations of secular nationalist ideologues in the context of the rapidly changing global economy notwithstanding, the paper also underscore the government as an emerging political and military power which has provided its citizenry the much desired good governance, and a source of inspiration to many religious ideologues. Given the current realities of the government’s resilience as a result of the accommodation of the two broad political fabrics – religious orthodoxy and secular nationalism – which virulent opposition hitherto informed the 1979 revolution, the paper recommends an in-depth study of the Iranian model of government for possible appreciation and possible modification as may be appropriate for similar socio-cultural settings given her achievement of relative peace and stability

Monetary Policy and Money Supply in Nigeria: A Comparative Analysis: 1993-2018

The study researched on a comparative analysis of the impact of monetary policy on money stock in Nigeria. Monthly data were sourced from the CBN online database between 1993M1 and 2018M10. Monetary policy rate (MR), cash reserve ratio (CR) and liquidity ratio (LR) represented the main monetary policy instruments that were made the explanatory variables while broad money supply (M2) stood as dependent variable. ADF and PP tests were carried out to make the data stationary and then VAR and ECM were employed for analysis. Standardised coefficient through the ARDL was also used for proper comparison. Finding of the study revealed that, in the short run, all the variables had the correct negative signs but only the CR was significant, while in the long run, all variables were correctly signed and significant except for CR. Also, monetary policy had a high speed of adjusting the money stock back to equilibrium. The result also unveiled that, LR had the greatest impact in regulating money stock, followed by CR and the MR. However, MR had the highest ability to forecast money stock, followed by LR and then CR, and the abilities were felt even up to the eight month. The study, therefore recommends that the monetary authority should give most attention to LR in regulating money stock in Nigeria and mostly consider MR in forecasting the stock of money. JEL Codes:         E52,    E58 DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/9-3-12 Publication date:March 31st 201

Collaborative and Adaptive Framework for Telediagnosis and Prescriptions in Herbal Medicine

Herbal medicine has been an age long tradition for the treatment and cure of diseases globally. Previous researches on telediagnosis and prescriptions in orthodox medicine studied applications of modern technological devices which could improve health care services. However, there is yet to be an exhaustive study on the audio-visual technological framework for telediagnosis and prescription in herbal medicine.  Hence, the research developed a collaborative and adaptive framework for telediagnosis and prescriptions in herbal medicine. The framework and its system were developed consisting of multimedia features for videoconferencing; ability to record, capture and replay consultations; and capacity for editing, data compression and short message service amongst herbal tele-consultants. The system was experimented on Ladoke Akintola University of Technology hotspot network for a period of twenty one days in order to determine the system’s average packet loss rate and packet transmitted with five herbal tele-consultant nodes (node-1, node2, node3, node4 and node5). All nodes were allotted Internet Protocol addresses through which the intending herbal tele-consultant(s) could be connected to the telediagnosis videoconference session. Three performance metrics, System Reliability Index (SRI), System Degree of Relevance (SDR), and System Ease of Usage (SEU) were used to carry out subject to the evaluation of the system by administering one hundred questionnaires herbal consultants to harvest users’ perception of the system based on a Likert rating scale. The results obtained from telediagnosis session showed that the system recorded packet loss rates of 3.46, 3.13, 3.42, 3.61 and 3.36% at node1, node2, node3, node4 and node5, respectively. Also, the average packets of 3123.2, 5017.6, 5683.2, 4454.4 and 4249.6 bits were obtained at node1, node2, node3, node4 and node5, respectively. The summary of the subjected evaluation of the system indicate that the respondent’s response means of 3.20, 2.88. and 3.42 were obtained for the SRI, SDR and SEU, respectively on a rating scale of 1 to 5

Development of Campus Video-Conference System Based on Peer-To-Peer Architecture

Peer to Peer (P2P) systems inherently have high scalability, robustness and fault tolerance because there is no centralized server and the network self-organizes itself. This is achieved at the cost of higher latency for locating the resources of interest in the P2P overlay network. This paper describes the design and implementation of campus video conference system based on P2P architecture that was tested within premises of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Nigeria. The proposed Campus video conference system is made up of five modules which are the media stream engine, the conferencing control protocol, transmission module, TCP/UDP module and the user interface module. The media stream engine is responsible for audio/video capture and playback, the conferencing control protocol defines a set of conventions governing the structure and behavior of communication messages, the transmission module consists of a peer and a distribution network constituting of the peers also the delivery and exchange of streaming data while the audio manager and video manager use TCP/UDP to broadcast to other peer. The proposed system will offer smooth video conferencing with low delay and seldom and short freezes. It is believed that this videoconference system will bring video telephony to a new level of quality and will lead to a new trend in everyday communications in the university community

Prophetic Economic Model and Global Economic Systems: A Critical Assessment

In recent times, debilitating economic crises had sought to cripple some of the developed nations of the world, especially across Europe and the United States. This has been in spite of the advancement in the frontiers of knowledge of economics from which evolved such basic systems as capitalism and socialism, with their various derivatives and manifestations, toward making not only individual life but corporate entities and governance as meaningful as they could possibly be. Against this background, the paper critically examines the principles and practice of the two broad contemporary economic systems vis-à-vis the economics enunciated by Prophet Muhammad. The paper concludes with the recommendation of the Prophetic model as the panacea for not only contemporary challenges but those which man has yet to envision. Keywords: capitalism. socialism. economic systems. prophetic panace

Financial ratios and firm performance of Nigerian manufacturing companies

Performance of Nigerian manufacturing companies. Past literature argued that among the challenges of the firms include management problems and financial constraints. Studies revealed that firms’ success could be examined through liquidity efficiency, financial leverage, operating activities, and management competency. Thus, this study aims to assess the financial ratios in relation to firms’ financial performance. Using stakeholders’ theory, agency theory, and signaling theory, four hypotheses related to the financial ratios and financial performances are proposed. Return on assets and return on equity are the dependent variables, while liquidity efficiency, financial leverage, business operating activities and management competency are the independent variables. This research examines published financial statements of 66 listed Nigerian manufacturing firms covering a period of years 2011 to 2015, giving a total observation of 330. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlation test, and multiple linear regression via the EVIEWS8 version. The overall findings of the study reveal that liquidity efficiency (cash gap), leverage efficiency (total debt to total assets), and firm size show a significant positive relationship with both returns on assets and return on equity. Further, the findings show that leverage efficiency (long-term debt to total equity) has a significant positive relationship with return on equity. The study will add to the existing literature by applying the stakeholder theory concerns with stakeholder-oriented management to increase profitability. Agency theory will assist on an optimal debt financing decision to enhance profit maximization and signaling theory helps to reveal a firm’s success or failure through financial ratios. Practically, this study will benefit the management of Nigerian manufacturing firms in financial performance improvement. Further, it will assist owners, investors, government, and management consultants in relation to decision-making related to the Nigerian manufacturing firms

An assessment of intergovernmental relations in Nigeria

This research work is aimed at highlighting the pertinent issues associated with intergovernmental relations in Nigeria. The research objectives include: to determine the nature of intergovernmental relations in Nigeria, to ascertain the role of intergovernmental relations in improving service delivery in core sectors of the Nigeria economy, and to determine the place of local government in intergovernmental relations in Nigeria. This study made use of both the primary and secondary sources of gathering data. From the findings of this study, it is discovered that the existing mechanisms and institutions for intergovernmental policy coordination are weak and need strengthening. This study recommends that more attention should be paid to the equity dimension of revenue sharing, government accountability for utilization of public money in general and for use of a common pool of funds such as the federation account in particular should be strengthened. In addition, this study also recommend the introduction of specific grant schemes directly linked to expansion of sub national government financing in key sectors

On the use of drains in orthopedic and trauma

Introduction: The use of drains in trauma and Orthopaedic practice has been affected by the concept of evidence based medicine that has become accepted as standard of care for all surgical or medical practice, which questions all care processes that cannot be backed by evidence to be beneficial to the patient. There have been a large number of multi centre meta-analytical studies that found drains to be of little or no benefit in trauma and Orthopaedic operations. Because of these studies, there are few situations where drains are routinely used e.g. Calcaneal fractures in developed countries. Even major procedures like total knee and arthroplasties are being performed without drains. We set to findout whether such evidence can be found in our practice.Materials and Methods: Between 2004 and 2012, eighty six patients  matched for sex and type of injury and operative procedures to be done were prospectively selected and assigned to use or no use of drains in their operations. Complications like haematoma, drain migration, infection, inadvertent drain stitching were observed in the two groups.Results: Eighty six major orthopaedic operations were studied. There was no evidence of occurrence of complication arising from non use of drains in the undrained group. Those patients whose wounds were drained had no   need for drain change thus making the wound care less eventfulConclusion: Postoperative wound drains make for neat postoperative period with less tissue swelling. There was no statistically significant  differences between the drained and undrained wounds in terms of  infection rates, haematoma or seroma formation.Key words: Drains, drained surgical wounds, undrained surgical wound

Financial leverage and financial performance of Nigerian manufacturing firms

This paper examined the association between financial leverage and financial performance of Nigerian manufacturing firms. Performance is the ability of management to control firms’ resources to gain competitive advantage. Among the internal organisational factors that affect firms’ profitability is financial leverage which is the firms’ capital structure framework. From agency theory perspective, it is hypothesised that profitability increases with debt financing to a certain optimal level of debts. A five-year data covering a period between 2011 to 2015, sourced from the financial statements of 66 Nigerian manufacturing firms were collected. This study found that financial leverage is positively and significantly associated with the financial performance of Nigerian manufacturing firms, measured as return on equity (ROE). Further, the firms with moderate level of debt ratio are found positively associated with ROE. In contrast, all equity-financed firms and those firms with excessive debts financing are negatively associated with ROE. A positive association is also found between firm size and revenue growth rate with ROE. Nigerian manufacturing firms are recommended to apply agency theory of optimal debts financing to address their financial constraint and poor performance issues