Long and Short Run Relationship between Stock Market Development and Economic Growth in Nigeria

We examined the long and short run association subsisting between stock market development(market capitalisation, value of transactions, number of deal and all share index), and Nigerian economicgrowth (RGDP) with quarterly data from 1986 to 2017. The Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model isapplied for the purpose of estimation. The ARDL bound test result revealed that all the indicators of marketdevelopment exert positive effect on the RGDP in the short run. Further, all the indicators except number ofdeals, have direct and significant relationship with economic growth. Moreover, we find that marketdevelopment causes economic growth. Consequently, we recommend a need for the implementation ofpolicies and procedures capable of enhancing investors’ confidence and boosting market because of theirperceived multiplier impacts on economic growth. Effort should also be focused on the enhancement of stockmarket size which in turn will provide the needed fund for investment and thus resulting in rise in the RGDP

Educated Parents’ Practice of Child Labour in Ekiti State, Nigeria

Child labour has been observed to be a common practice among illiterates due to poor socio-economic background. Some parents and guardians keep their children in child labour in order to supplement family income. Educated parents who should know the risks involved and enlighten the illiterate parents seem to engage children in hazardous work that directly endangers their health and moral development. This paper examined educated parents’ practice of child labour in Ekiti state. Descriptive survey research design was adopted with a sample of 600 educated parents selected among civil servants working in Local Government Secretariats through multi stage sampling procedure. One research question and three hypotheses were generated for the study. A questionnaire tagged “Educated Parents’ Practice of Child Labour Questionnaire (EPPCLQ)” was used to collect data. The instrument was subjected to screening by experts to ensure validity and reliability was determined through test re-test method that yielded 0.85 reliability coefficients. The study revealed that level of child labour practice among educated parents was moderate, practice of child labour differed based on gender and location of educated parents while the study found no significant difference in educated parents’ practice of child labour based on income. Based on this, it was recommended among others that parents should desist from engaging children in child labour which has been found to be injurious and detrimental to their health and moral development and families need to look for other means of sourcing for income in order to fight poverty and discourage the practice

Educated Parents’ Practice of Child Labour in Ekiti State, Nigeria

Child labour has been observed to be a common practice among illiterates due to poor socio-economic background. Some parents and guardians keep their children in child labour in order to supplement family income. Educated parents who should know the risks involved and enlighten the illiterate parents seem to engage children in hazardous work that directly endangers their health and moral development. This paper examined educated parents’ practice of child labour in Ekiti state. Descriptive survey research design was adopted with a sample of 600 educated parents selected among civil servants working in Local Government Secretariats through multi stage sampling procedure. One research question and three hypotheses were generated for the study. A questionnaire tagged “Educated Parents’ Practice of Child Labour Questionnaire (EPPCLQ)” was used to collect data. The instrument was subjected to screening by experts to ensure validity and reliability was determined through test re-test method that yielded 0.85 reliability coefficients. The study revealed that level of child labour practice among educated parents was moderate, practice of child labour differed based on gender and location of educated parents while the study found no significant difference in educated parents’ practice of child labour based on income. Based on this, it was recommended among others that parents should desist from engaging children in child labour which has been found to be injurious and detrimental to their health and moral development and families need to look for other means of sourcing for income in order to fight poverty and discourage the practice

Educated Parents’ Practice of Child Labour in Ekiti State, Nigeria

Child labour has been observed to be a common practice among illiterates due to poor socio-economic background. Some parents and guardians keep their children in child labour in order to supplement family income. Educated parents who should know the risks involved and enlighten the illiterate parents seem to engage children in hazardous work that directly endangers their health and moral development. This paper examined educated parents’ practice of child labour in Ekiti state. Descriptive survey research design was adopted with a sample of 600 educated parents selected among civil servants working in Local Government Secretariats through multi stage sampling procedure. One research question and three hypotheses were generated for the study. A questionnaire tagged “Educated Parents’ Practice of Child Labour Questionnaire (EPPCLQ)” was used to collect data. The instrument was subjected to screening by experts to ensure validity and reliability was determined through test re-test method that yielded 0.85 reliability coefficients. The study revealed that level of child labour practice among educated parents was moderate, practice of child labour differed based on gender and location of educated parents while the study found no significant difference in educated parents’ practice of child labour based on income. Based on this, it was recommended among others that parents should desist from engaging children in child labour which has been found to be injurious and detrimental to their health and moral development and families need to look for other means of sourcing for income in order to fight poverty and discourage the practice

Genetic Diversity of Selected Upland Rice Genotypes (Oryza sativa L.) for Grain Yield and Related Traits

Seventy-seven upland rice genotypes including popular cultivars in Nigeria and introduced varieties selected from across rice-growing regions of the world were evaluated under optimal upland ecology. These genotypes were characterised for 10 traits and the quantitative data subjected to Pearson correlation matrix, Principal Component Analysis and cluster analysis to determine the level of diversity and degree of association existing between grain yield and its related component traits. Yield and most related component traits exhibited higher PCV compared to growth parameters. Yield had the highest PCV (41.72%) while all other parameters had low to moderate GCV. Genetic Advance (GA) ranged from 9.88% for plant height at maturity to 41.08% for yield. High heritability estimates were recorded for 1000 grain weight (88.71%), days to 50% flowering (86.67%) and days to 85% maturity (71.98%). Furthermore, grain yield showed significant positive correlation with days to 50% flowering and number of panicles m-2. Three cluster groups were obtained based on the UPGMA and the first three principal components explained about 64.55% of the total variation among the 10 characters. The PCA results suggests that characters such as grain yield, days to flowering, leaf area and plant height at maturity were the principal discriminatory traits for this rice germplasm indicating that selection in favour of these traits might be effective in this population and environment

Democratic Consolidation in Africa: The Ghanaian Paradigm

The ‘Third Wave\u27of democracy resulted in transition galore in Africa. Authoritarian governments abandoned authoritarianism fora reconstructed political society which mirrors the institutions and processes of liberal democracy. What is strange however, is the fact that most of the countries that transited to democratic rule in the region about three decades ago are not making significant progress towards consolidating their hard earned democracy. Electoral violence and some other anti-democratic practices have made the mantra of good governance a mere rhetoric, and kept democracy perpetually nascent in most of the countries in the region. But worthy of note is the reference being made to Ghana, by some observers of African politics, as a beacon of democracy in Africa. The crux of this paper therefore is to attempt a critical evaluation of Ghanaian\u27s democratic experience to determine the extent to which the country can be referred to as a consolidated democracy. Descriptive/qualitative method was used for data analysis. The paper discovered that Ghana indeed possesses some strikingly unique democratic experience which distinguish it from other African states. Although the countryis still struggling with some anti-democratic challenges like vote buying and executive recklessness, which if not properly addressed may erode any democratic gains recorded so far. Nevertheless, the impressive democratic credentials or the indices of democratic consolidation in the country as discovered by this research, can make one to conclude that Ghana is on the path of achieving democratic consolidation

Some extended Pareto Type I distributions

Probability distributions are essential in data modeling. Introduction of parameter(s) into existing probability distributions is a method of extending or generalizing distributions to produce more flexible distributions and for better fit to data. The Pareto type 1 distribution (PT1) is a right skewed continuous distribution originally used in description of wealth and income but also used for modeling other right skewed data. To add flexibility, Pareto type 1 distribution was extended by introducing parameter(s) into its probability distribution to accommodate more types of data. Some functions of the extended Pareto type 1 distributions were derived using five parameter induction methods. Flexibility of extended distributions was demonstrated through comparisons of density and hazard function shapes of some of the extended distributions with those of the PT1. Further study on properties of non-existing extended Pareto Type I distributions and real-life applications are recommended