Nature of Arbitral Awards in Nigeria: an Overview

The need to explore other means of dispute resolution has resulted in the development of Alternative Dispute Resolution mechanisms, prominent among which is arbitration. Arbitration is the most regulated mechanism and is best suited for commercial relationships because, while it seeks to preserve existing relationships, it also ends in an award which is binding on the parties to the proceedings. The study examined the nature of arbitral awards through the lens of decided cases and the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 2004. The study adopted the doctrinal method of research and relied on primary sources of information such as statutes, cases and conventions; as well as secondary sources of information such as books, journal articles and materials gotten from the internet, all subject to content analysis. The study found that the award, which is final and binding on the parties, has the same status as a judgment of the court in Nigeria when recognised and enforced, but may be set aside where any of the essential requirements are lacking. The study concluded by stating the need for everyone involved to take conscious steps from the beginning of the arbitration in order to end up with a valid and an enforceable award

Aspects of Impacts of Proposed Badagry Deep Sea Port on the Ecosystem and Livelihood of Fishing Communities in Badagry, Lagos State, Nigeria

Federal government of Nigeria, in collaboration with Lagos StateGovernment proposed development of a seaport in Badagry. This researchexamined and documented the current state of the ecosystem and livelihoodof thirteen communities that will be impacted by the proposed deep-seaport. Qualitative and quantitative approaches were used for the study.Review of secondary data was used to investigate the demographic dataof the community while Participatory Rural Appraisal was conducted for300 households in the communities. Majority of the sampled respondentswere in the age range of 45 years and above with females (60%) more thanmales (40%) in the entire population sampled. Educational levels of therespondents are relatively low. The majority of the sampled householdshave multiple livelihood systems that keep them engaged throughout allseasons of the year. Capture fisheries is the major occupation in the studyarea and it is complemented with aquaculture. Existing groups are notstrong enough to operate as a pressure group to influence policies andregulate market prices, which has been identified as a major limitation inthe study area. There was no regular training or capacity building. Hencethe groups were not operating as a business enterprise and could not expandor increase capacity. Consequently not able to contribute significantlyto poverty alleviation and increase employment opportunities in theirlocalities. This document will serve as one of the guides to the governmentfor decision-making and compensation to the communities

Impact of Health Education in Halting the Spread of Infectious Diseases in Nigerian Schools

The future of a nation depends to a large extent on the health of its citizens. Man from time immemorial has recognized diseases as an inevitable phenomenon that affects the life of Nigerian school pupils. This paper has mentioned the classes of infectious diseases, nature of common infectious diseases in schools as well as control of infectious diseases in Nigerian school system. Recommendations offered are directed towards pupils, school administrators, parents and government

Interrogating the Citizen-Centered Services and Development in Nigeria's Agricultural Sector Through E-Governance

The provision of citizen-centered services and development are critical indices in the measurement of performance of every government. In this era of Information Communication Technology (ICT), government businesses can be conducted through the electronic governance (EGOV) platform. E-governance involves the development, deployment and enforcement of the policies, laws and regulations necessary to support the functioning of a knowledge society as well as the transformation of internal and external public sector relationship through ICT in order to optimize government service delivery and citizen participations. Nigeria is being threatened by internal insecurity because of preponderance of its citizens who engage in vices like thuggery, insurgency, kidnapping, robbery, drug addiction due to lack of access to government services such as information, capital to start and grow businesses, amongst other essential needs for development. Also, corruption at the forefront of government hinders the transfer of funds from government to the citizen. Based on this premise, the Nigerian Ministry of Agriculture in 2012 adopted the use of ICT through the Growth Enhancement Support Scheme in releasing funds to local famers thereby cutting unnecessary bureaucracy and corruption that hindered the growth of the Agriculture sector in Nigeria. This study utilizes secondary data for the method of analyses by reviewing extant literature on the e-wallet scheme implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture in Nigeria, and in addition analyzed the extent to which the E-wallet scheme delivered citizen-centered services for national development in Nigeria. The findings show that e-governance enhanced the delivery of citizen-centered services and national development. Based on these findings, non-participatory government ministries are advised to take advantage of citizen-centered EGOV platforms to empower the nation

WOMEN AND PEACEBUILDING IN THE POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION OF SIERRA LEONE, 2002-2016

The role of women in resolving conflicts and ensuring a lasting peace and security in a society cannot be undermined. Conflict resolution, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding are not only concerned with those involved in war or military conflicts, which are overwhelmingly men but also women who were affected by the war as victims and also as perpetrators. However, the participation of women at peace tables has historically been minimal. According to the UN Women reports, between 1992 and 2019, women constituted on average, 13 percent of negotiators, and 6% of mediators, 6 percent of signatories in major peace processes worldwide. About seven out of every ten peace processes did not include women mediators or women signatories. Women bring valuable expertise, experiences, and knowledge to dispute mediation and peace-building efforts. As a result, their direct involvement in decision-making is needed. Drawing on the extant literature on Women and Peacebuilding, this study examined the efforts of Peacebuilding by women in the State of Sierra Leone. This study examined the roles men and women played before the war, during the war and after war as victims, perpetrators, as peacekeepers and as heads of households. The study used the qualitative and quantitative research method of data collection which gathered analysed and interpreted data on the subject matter of women and peacebuilding in post-conflict Sierra Leone. In particular, it employed the review of extant literature on Women and Peacebuilding, and primary data collection using the questionnaire as instrument of data collection, Focused Group Discussions (FGDs) and key informant interviews. The findings of this study showed that the barriers women faced in a post-conflict society arise from the fact that women are only seen as victims and men as perpetrators. This study also concludes that to ensure a gender inclusive and culturally sensitive peacebuilding, the patriarchal perception on leadership and decision making should be eradicated. Some of the steps to be taken to actualize sustainable peace should involve a multifaceted approach to sensitization, education and policy enactment and procedures that is gender inclusive. It recommends that the Sierra Leone government should ensure that all Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) use affirmative action in the recruiting and promotion of women in their organisations, in order to ensure Sierra Leone's long-term peace and stability

Evaluation of the Potency of Commercial and Locally Prepared Antibiotic Discs on Clinical Bacterial Isolates in Calabar, Nigeria

Antibiotic susceptibility discs are used for vitro susceptibility testing of antimicrobial agents to fast growing bacteria and fastidious species by agar diffusion method. It is a semi quantitative method. This study was designed to assess the efficacy of commercial antibiotic discs over in-house prepared discs. Identified clinical isolates were obtained in house in the Department of Medical Microbiology/Parasitology, University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Nigeria. Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 7553) and Escherichia Coli (ATCC 25922) were obtained and used as controls. The antibiotics tested includes; Ciprofloxacin, Erythromycin, Amoxicillin, Gentamicin, Zinacef. These were obtained commercially from Pharmacy shops. The local antibiotic dics were prepared with Whatman filter paper number 3. The antibiotic susceptibility testing was done using Kirby-Bauer method. Out of the 40 clinical isolates tested, 15(37.5%) were Staphylococcus aureus while 10(12.5%) each were Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa respectively. Only 5 isolates of Proteus vulgaris were used. The susceptibility profile of isolates to the commonly used local antibiotic discs ranged between 66.7% to 100%, while the range for commercial discs was 53.3% to 86.7%. Locally prepared discs were found to be more effective than commercial discs. The high resistance rates (0.0% to 33.3%) of clinical isolates to the commercial discs may be attributed to prolong exposure to environmental factors such as heat, moisture, sunlight as well as humidity when transported to retailers and the final users. There is need for constant monitoring and quality controls of susceptibility testing in our laboratories for the production of quality results and efficient patient care. Antibiotic susceptibility discs can be prepared locally for routine laboratory use; this may indirectly reduce importation of commercial discs and the burden on foreign exchange

Comparative Analysis of Market Efficiency and Volatility of Energy Prices Before and During COVID-19 Pandemic Periods

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected energy demand and pricing globally due to different lockdown measures embarked on by governments in different economies. As a result, prices of oil and petroleum products dropped drastically at the peak of the pandemic period. The present paper, therefore, investigates the effect of the pandemic on energy markets and compared the levels of market efficiency, volatility, and volatility persistence. Two 5-monthly daily data windows are considered, each for the period before and during the pandemic, and an updated nonlinear fractional integration approach in time series analysis is employed. Having considered prices of Crude oil, Gasoline, Diesel, Heating oil, Kerosene, and Propane from US markets, we find that energy markets are less efficient during the Covid-19 pandemic period, even though with higher volatility but with lesser volatility persistence compared to the period before the pandemic. Thus, volatility shocks last for a shorter period during the 5-month pandemic period than in the 5-month period that precedes the pandemic. It is hoped that the findings of this work will be of interest to oil marketers and administrators in the international oil markets

MALARIA PARASITAEMIA AMONG BLOOD DONORS IN ILORIN, NIGERIA.

Background: The prevalence of malaria parasitaemia among blood donors in Ilorin has not been documented. In this study, we determined the prevalence of malaria parasitaemia among blood donors in Ilorin, as well as, the sociodemographic and other factors associated with it. Method: This was a hospital- based cross sectional study involving 308 consenting blood donors. The sociodemographic characteristics of participants as well as blood donation history were obtained using structured questionnaires specifically designed for this purpose. Giemsa-stained thick and thin blood films to identify malaria parasites were performed using standard method. ABO blood grouping and haemoglobin electrophoresis tests were also done using standard methods. Results: The prevalence of malaria parasitaemia among blood donors in Ilorin was 27.3%. The parasite species found were more of Plasmodium falciparum(85.7%) than Plasmodium malariae(14.3%) . There was no age or sex difference in malaria parasitaemia. (p-value of 0.8 and 0.32 respectively). A greater proportion of blood group O individuals had malaria parasitaemia than groups A and B but this difference was not significant (p-value = 0.13). There was also no significant difference among haemoglobin genotypes. Conclusion: The prevalence of malaria parasites among blood donors in Ilorin is considerably high and lack of routine screening of blood puts recipients at risk. We recommend that routine screening for malaria parasites be commenced in our blood banks. Treatment of donor blood with riboflavin and UV light to inactivate malaria parasites and other infectious pathogens before they are transfused to patients may also be considered in our blood banks

Cost Effectiveness of Mobile Health for Antenatal Care and Facility Births in Nigeria

Background: The use of mobile technology in the health sector, often referred to as mHealth, is an innovation that is being used in countries to improve health outcomes and increase and improve both the demand and supply of health care services. This study assesses the actual cost-effectiveness of initiating and implementing the use of the mHealth as a supply side job aid for antenatal care. The study also estimates the cost-effectiveness ratio if mHealth was also used to encourage and track women through facility delivery. Methods: The methodology utilized a retrospective, micro-costing technique to extract costing data from health facilities and administrative offices to estimate the costs of implementing the mHealth antenatal care program and estimate the cost of facility delivery for those that used the antenatal care services in the year 2014. Five different costing tools were developed to assist in the costing analysis. Findings: The results show that the provision of tetanus toxoid vaccination and malaria prophylaxis during pregnancy and improved labor and delivery during facility delivery contributed the most to mortality reductions for women, neonates and stillbirths in mHealth facilities versus non-mHealth facilities. The cost-effectiveness ratio of this program for antenatal care and no demand-side generation for facility delivery is US$13,739 per life saved. The cost-effectiveness ratio adding in an additional demand-side generation for facility births reduces to US$9,806 per life saved. Conclusion: These results show that mHealth programs are inexpensive and save a number of lives for the dollar investment and could save additional lives and funds if women were also encouraged to seek facility delivery

Development of the RIOT Web Service and Information Technologies to enable mechanism reduction for HCCI simulations.

Abstract. New approaches are being explored to facilitate multidisciplinary collaborative research of Homogenous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) combustion processes. In this paper, collaborative sharing of the Range Identification and Optimization Toolkit (RIOT) and related data and models is discussed. RIOT is a developmental approach to reduce the computational of detailed chemical kinetic mechanisms, enabling their use in modeling kinetically controlled combustion applications such as HCCI. These approaches are being developed and piloted as a part of the Collaboratory for Multiscale Chemical Sciences (CMCS) project. The capabilities of the RIOT code are shared through a portlet in the CMCS portal that allows easy specification and processing of RIOT inputs, remote execution of RIOT, tracking of data pedigree, and translation of RIOT outputs to a table view and to a commonly-used mechanism format. Introduction The urgent need for high-efficiency, low-emission energy utilization technologies for transportation, power generation, and manufacturing processes presents difficult challenges to the combustion research community. The needed predictive understanding requires systematic knowledge across the full range of physical scales involved in combustion processes -from the properties and interactions of individual molecules to the dynamics and products of turbulent multi-phase reacting flows. Innovative experimental techniques and computational approaches are revolutionizing the rate at which chemical science research can produce the new information necessary to advance our combustion knowledge. But the increased volume and complexity of this information often makes it even more difficult to derive the systems-level knowledge we need. Combustion researchers have responded by forming interdisciplinary communities intent on sharing information and coordinating research priorities. Such efforts face many barriers, however, including lack of data accessibility and interoperability, missing metadata and pedigree information, efficient approaches for sharing data and analysis tools, and the challenges of working together across geography, disciplines, and a very diverse spectrum of applications and funding. This challenge is especially difficult for those developing, sharing and/or using detailed chemical models of combustion to treat the oxidation of practical fuels. This is a very complex problem, and the development of new chemistry models requires a series of steps that involve acquiring and keeping track of a large amount of data and its pedigree. Also, this data is developed using a diverse range of codes and experiments spanning ab initio chemistry codes, laboratory kinetics and flame experiments, all the way to reacting flow simulations on massively parallel computers. Each of these processes typically requires different data formats, and often the data and/or analysis codes are only accessible by personally contacting the creator. Chemical models are usually shared in a legacy file format, such as Chemki