Election Violence and Voter Turnout in 2019 General Elections: What Role for Political Parties?

This study examines the incidence of electoral violence and its resultant effects on voter turnout in the 2019 general elections in Nigeria, with the role of political parties as the focal point of discussion. A review of election data shows; voter turnout has been on the decline from 69% in 2003 to 35% in 2019. While a handful of factors could be responsible, the study ascribes its prevalence to the antic’s political parties (incumbent and opposition) and politicians who deliberately deploy violence as an electoral strategy. To account for the relationship between, political parties, electoral violence and voter turn-out, the study builds on theories of voter mobilization in and advanced and emerging democracies. Against this, it concludes in the absence of enduring party-voter relations in Nigeria, political parties and politicians alike, resort to vote buying, mobilization of political thugs and in other times deployment of state coercive apparatus to intimidate opponents all of which culminates into electoral irregularities which has the potency to instigate electoral violence. This in turn has in amongst others adversely affected voter turn-out as rightly observed over five electoral cycles

Socio-economic determinants of students’ academic achievement in building technology in North-central Nigeria

This study investigated socio-economic determinants of students’ academic achievement in building technology in North-central Nigeria. It was a quest to probe into the incessant cases of students’ poor achievement in building technology to identify students’ determining factors. Survey research design was adopted in carrying out the study. Data were collected from 113 students on their socioeconomic attributes and their academic record. Data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean and multiple regression analysis. The results of the study showed that building technology education in Nigeria is male dominated and majority of colleges of education students in North-central Nigeria are under 20 years. Socio-economic determinants of students’ academic achievement in building technology include gender, age, study hours, family size, stipends per month, group reading, students’ health status, credit pass in SSCE and truancy. The challenges facing building technology students in the study area include epileptic power supply, inadequate ICTs, lack of functional building technology workshop among others

Assessment of Housing Conditions for a Developing Urban Slum using Geospatial Analysis: A Case Study of Durumi, Garki-2, Gishiri and Jabi of the City of Abuja, Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria

The parameters used for urban slum classification are water source, accessibility types, wall materials, conditions and types of waste disposal, roof and roof trusses types, and cluster nature of the study areas as detected by NigeriaSAT-1 imagery data. Applications of remote sensing are best and better appropriate way to identify slums through the presence of the following features; housing density, structure, and roof composition. However, it was observed that the study areas had been in a condition of virtual slum before 2005. The results of housing conditions classification shows that slums are often associated and characterized by substandard housing structures, poor living conditions, narrow access that do not allow vehicles, experience a high rate of disease, poor water quality, window and door made from substandard material, and  unhealthy disposal of waste. In addition, the geo-statistical analysis also show positive relationship with the slum index; water 0.0536 (5%), solid and liquid waste 0.3707 (37%), wall to the building 0.7594 (76%), roof 0.3253 (33%), toilet wall 0.5313 (53%), kitchen wall 0.6020 (60%), door 0.3191 (32%), window 0.4255 (43%) and accessibility 0.3167 (32%). In the final analysis, it was observed that the methods agree largely with the areas classified as slum or squatter settlement. This conclusion was made based on the results of the housing conditions classifications, statistical analysis and cluster nature of the study areas displayed in palette of Arcmap-10.1 supervised classification. It is recommended that, this classification approach be used for assessing the state of housing conditions in urban slums. Keywords: assessment, housing conditions, urban/city slum, geospatial algorithm

Solubility trapping as a potential secondary mechanism for CO2 sequestration during enhanced gas recovery by CO2 injection in conventional natural gas reservoirs : an experimental approach

This study aims to experimentally investigate the potential of solubility trapping mechanism in increasing CO2 storage during EGR by CO2 injection and sequestration in conventional natural gas reservoirs. A laboratory core flooding process was carried out to simulate EGR on a sandstone core at 0, 5, 10 wt% NaCl formation water salinity at 1300 psig, 50 °C and 0.3 ml/min injection rate. The results show that CO2 storage capacity was improved significantly when solubility trapping was considered. Lower connate water salinities (0 and 5 wt%) showed higher CO2 solubility from IFT measurements. With 10% connate water salinity, the highest accumulation of the CO2 in the reservoir was realised with about 63% of the total CO2 injected stored; an indication of improved storage capacity. Therefore, solubility trapping can potentially increase the CO2 storage capacity of the gas reservoir by serving as a secondary trapping mechanism in addition to the primary structural and stratigraphic trapping and improving CH4 recovery

Reflection on the State of Islam and Muslim Scholars in Continuing the Islamic Tradition in Arawa Land, Nigeria

The study aimed to identify the contributions of scholars on the State of Islam and Muslim Scholars in Continuing the Islamic Tradition in Arawa Land. The paper attempted to brings into limelight the various contributions of Islamic scholars from North Africa (Maghrib) the entrenchment Islamic teachings in Arawaaland particularly the Wangarawa traders and Muhammad Kanta, Askia Muhammad, Muhammad bn Abd al-karim al Maghili. Also discussed in the paper, was the role played by the Sokoto Jihad scholars to the development of Islam and Islamic tradition in Arawa Land. However, the outcomes confirmed that, Arawa Land is currently witnessing the proliferation Muslim scholars and preachers whose proselytization activities have continued to impact positively on the life of the people. The researchers sourced data from the secondary sources as well interview complemented by observation and analyzed them. It is on the basis of such that, the findings of this research have portrayed the various contributions of Muslim scholars to the development of Islam and Islamic tradition in Arawa Lan

Problems of Sources for The Reconstruction of The History of Islam in Yauri Emirate

The paper examined the challenges encountered during data collection in a field survey. There existed some variations between oral narratives and documented evidence on the history of Islam in Yauri Emirate. Management of such conflicting data from primary and secondary sources in academic research was one of the most tasking endeavors because it required corroboration people who witnessed the events and experts with authentic versions of the historical development of the event under investigation. Reconciling such data has become a daunting task for the researchers however when the researcher resorted to verification of the data collected from the experts and available old people in the community concerned, both data could be harmonized and produced robust findings in the reconstruction of Islamic history in Yauri Emirate

Problems of Sources for the Reconstruction of the History of Islam in Yauri Emirate

The paper examined the challenges encountered during data collection in a field survey. There existed some variations between oral narratives and documented evidence on the history of Islam in Yauri Emirate. Management of such conflicting data from primary and secondary sources in academic research was one of the most tasking endeavors because it required corroboration people who witnessed the events and experts with authentic versions of the historical development of the event under investigation. Reconciling such data has become a daunting task for the researchers however when the researcher resorted to verification of the data collected from the experts and available old people in the community concerned, both data could be harmonized and produced robust findings in the reconstruction of Islamic history in Yauri Emirate

Development of LoRa-Sigfox IoT device for long distance applications

A key feature that is required from the IoT-enabled devices is low power and long-range communication. In this paper, a prototype IoT device that is enabled with LoRa and Sigfox communication technology is developed and tested. The prototype device is built using the Pycom Fipy module and tested in a LoRaWAN setup and Sigfox setup. A test was conducted to determine the performance of the LoRa propagation in different environments and at different times of the day. The experimental data shows the coverage and diurnal performance using the IoT device. A distance of 1.17km was achieved in the open space using the LoRa while the propagation was highly impacted in the vegetation area with a distance of.512 km. The test for the Sigfox showed good coverage over a distance of 10 km. The results show the device can be used for both LoRa and Sigfox coverage test

Decision support platform for production of chili using IoT, cloud computing, and machine learning approach

The chili crop is largely grown in several regions of the world, especially in Asian and African countries. It is a major source of income for both small- and large-scale farmers. Unfortunately, chili farmers have to contend with the challenge of pests and diseases and the need for timely decisions to have a bountiful production. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a chili-decision support platform (chili-DSP) that can help farmers detect diseases, and nutrient deficiency and make timely decisions. The proposed system integrates the internet of things, cloud computing, and data analytics technologies. The framework and architecture of the proposed chili-DSP are presented in this paper and the preliminary results using the convolutional neural network (CNN) for the classification of chili are presented. The result shows that CNN provides an accurate prediction of the learned data set and can be extended to larger data set for real-time classification of chili diseases. The chili-DSP is expected to provide a comprehensive feature and support that will help the chili farmers enhance the production of chili while minimizing losses

Isolation and prevalence of Campylobacter species in cattle from Sokoto State, Nigeria

The prevalence of Campylobacter spp. in cattle in Sokoto State, Nigeria, was determined. The number of samples collected totalled 976, of which 126 (12.9%) yielded Campylobacter spp. The species of Campylobacter isolates from this study were as follows: C. jejuni (65.1%), C. coli (23.0%), C. lari (7.9%), C. hyointestinalis (3.2%) and C. fetus (0.8%). A total of 172 strains of Campylobacter spp. were identified from the positive samples due to identification of more than a single strain (spp.) from a single sample. The strains identified were C. jejuni (62.8%), C. coli (25.0%), C. lari (8.1%), C. hyointestinalis (2.9%) and C. fetus (1.2%). More than one species of Campylobacter was identified in 36.5% of the positive samples. The biotyping in this study revealed C. jejuni biotype I (34.3%) as the most common C. jejuni biotype, while C. jejuni biotype IV (15.7%) was the C. jejuni biotype that was least frequently isolated. However, the most frequently isolated C. coli biotype was biotype I (72.1%) and all the isolates of C. lari were biotype I