Deviants and Outcasts: Power and Politics in Hausa Bori Performances

The jihad of Uthman dan Fodio in the early ninteenth century had by 1806 established Islamic cultural and religious hegemony over the Hausa territory of present-day Northern Nigeria. In the process, Islam had succeeded in pushing indigenous religious and cultural practices such as Bori to the margins or underground. However, while most of the other indigenous forms died or became inactive and ineffectual, Bori has managed to hold its own against the persecution and cultural war waged against it by Islam, mainly because the belief in the power and ability of the spirits to influence human life which is at the centre of Bori practice was never lost. In this article, Osita Okagbue argues that marginalization has made Bori attractive to groups and individuals in Hausa society who feel themselves similarly marginalized and oppressed for articulating alternative identities and viewpoints to those of the mainstream society. He also examines how the possession performances of the Bori cult enable members to subvert and occasionally to use moments of trance and possession to invert the power relationships between oppressed groups and their oppressors

Culture and Identity in African and Caribbean Theatre

What connects Africa and the Caribbean is trans-Atlantic slavery which transported numerous sons and daughters of Africa to the plantations of the New World in the service of Western European capitalism. Because of this shared experience of trans-Atlantic slavery and European colonialism, issues of culture and identity are major concerns for African and Caribbean playwrights. Slavery and colonialism had involved systematic acts of cultural denigration, de-humanisation and loss of freedom, which left imprints on the collective psyches of the colonised Africans and enslaved peoples of African descent in the Caribbean. Both experiences brought intense cultural and psychic dislocations which still impact in various ways on the lives of Africans and peoples of African descent around the world. African and Caribbean playwrights try to help their peoples regain their dignities by affirming their cultures, histories and identities. The book focuses on the similarities and differences between Caribbean theatre and the theatre of sub-Saharan Africa, showing how identities and cultures are negotiated and affirmed in each case

Susceptibility of selected commercial yeasts to autolysis for yeast extract production

A journal article on susceptibility of selected commercial yeasts to autolysis.Ten yeasts comprising nine Saccharomyces cerevisiae and one S.carlsbergensis were assessed for their susceptibility to autolysis for yeast extract production. The work was done in the period April to June, 2000. Each strain was autolysed in distilled water (pH 6.5) at 45°C for 6 hours and dry weight losses, release of proteins into the medium and pH monitored. Dry weight losses appeared to be the most discriminatory evidence of autolysis. Saccharomyces cerevisiae Y1045 and Y58 showed 25.0 percent and 23.9 percent dry weight losses respectively; the other strains autolysed less rapidly. Lactobacillus bulgaricusgrew comparably well in a basal medium supplemented with 5 percent (v/v) of S. cerevisiae Y1045 autolyzate, and in the same basal medium supplemented with 0.5 percent (w/v) commercial yeast extract. The study showed that S. cerevisiae Y1045 has the potential for use in yeast extract production

On iterative techniques for numerical solutions of linear and nonlinear differential equations

This paper presents Differential Transformation Method (DTM) and Picard’s Iterative Method (PIM) as computational techniques in solving linear and nonlinear differential equations. For numerical analysis of the methods, three examples are considered. The results obtained are compared with their corresponding exact solutions. A link between successive terms of the solutions using the two methods is noted. The DTM is very effective and reliable in obtaining approximate solutions. The PIM requires the satisfaction of Lipschitz continuity condition; though, its results also converge rapidly to the exact solutions

Breast cancer patients in Nigeria:Data exploration approach

Breast cancer is the type of cancer that develops from breast tissue;it is mostly common in women and it is one of the most studied diseases, largely because of its high mortality(second to lung cancer). However,it occursinmales also.This article presents a statistical study of the distribution of age,gender,length of stay, mode of diagnosis,status(dead or alive)after treatment and the location of breast cancer among 300 patients admitted in the University of Ilorin teaching hospital,Ilorin, Nigeria. The study covers a period of five (5)years;from 2011 to 2016 and logistic regression was used to perform the basic analysis int his study. It was discovered that the age of patient sand the location of the breast cancer(right or left)contributes significantly to the survival of the patients.However,early detection and treatment of the disease is highly encouraged.This study also recommends that awareness should be taken to the grassroots and males should not be excluded from this discussio

Progress and Utopia in Bode Sowande's Babylon Trilogy

Bode Sowande belongs to a second generation of Nigerian dramatists, which includes others such as Femi Osofisan, Kole Omotoso, Nasiru Akanji, Olu Obafemi, Tess Onwueme and Tunde Fatunde, who advocate a radical aesthetic for the theatre, different from the relatively conservative dramaturgy of the older generation of playwrights such as Wole Soyinka, J. P Clark-Bekederemo, Ola Rotimi and Zulu Sofola. Unlike the first generation dramatists who saw theatre as a medium for recording or articulating individual perceptions of communal or personal tensions and crises - see plays such as Soyinka’s The Strong Breed, Kongi’s Harvest and Death and the King’s Horseman, Clark-Bekederemo’s Song of a Goat, Masquerade and The Raft, Sofola’s Wedlock of the Gods and King Emene, and Rotimi’s Kurunmi and The Gods Are Not To Blame - the new generation are more concerned with utilising the theatre to articulate and/or search for a more egalitarian social order. For them, the theatre can be a useful context and tool for interrogating social systems and processes, as well as for exploring possibilities for initiating and achieving radical social change. For the new generation, the subject of their plays is the society and not the individuals caught up in its social throes; the result is that, unlike their predecessors, their theatre is usually neither concerned with individual consciousness and psychology, nor with personal tragedies and joys, but rather with opening up for scrutiny and analysis, the dynamics and tensions of social processes and systems. What they advocate is not that the theatre can, by itself, change society, but rather that it can be a site as well as a medium or language for myth and ideological deconstruction, contestations of histories, to allow for new and perhaps alternative readings and meanings. This means that the theatre, while it is not change or revolutionary itself, can be converted into a rehearsal for change or revolutio

A Monte Carlo Simulation Approach in Assessing Risk and Uncertainty Involved in Estimating the Expected Earnings of an Organization: A Case Study in Nigeria

This work provides a simulation-based approach of assessing the risk and uncertainty involved in estimating the expected earnings of an organization. The procedure involves using Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) in creating various possible outcomes and scenarios. The MCS is found to be more effective than single point estimates or guesswork. Hence, it is an efficient and useful tool in risk management analysis. The analysis of the output of the simulation reveals that the expected earnings is a little bit lower than the most likely forecasted value of N30m but there is 37% chance that the expected earnings might drop below or rise above the estimated value by margin of N10.9m and the wide range of possible outcomes make the venture to be very risky as uncertainties in unit sales, unit price or variable cost can push the earnings to assume any value within the wide range. It is also observed that a large increase in the unit sales and a moderate increase in the unit price will increase the expected revenue which will in turn increase the earnings. The regression analysis gives almost the same result as MCS

Approximate Solution of Multipoint Boundary Value Problems

This study applies the Differential Transform Method (DIM) to obtain the approximate solution of multipoint bmmdary value problems. Two examples are solved to illustrate the efficiency of the method. Comparison with the solution obtained by Adomian Decomposition Method revealed that the DIM is an excellent method for this type of problem

Application of Semi-Analytical Technique for Solving Thirteenth Order Boundary Value Problem

This work considers the numerical solution of thirteenth order boundary value problems using the modified Adomian decomposition method (MADM). Some examples are considered to illustrate the efficiency of the method. It is demonstrated that MADM converges more rapidly to the exact solution than the existing methods in literature and it reduces the computational involvemen