The Role of Ulama in Countering Boko Haram Insurgency: A Pattern of the Al-Azhar ‘Ulama

The eruption of Boko Haram and its insurgency in 2009 caused the loss of life and property that is unprecedented in northern Nigeria's history since independence. Various tools and approaches have been used in analyzing a phenomenon with a view to offering solutions to it. People from various walks of life including professionals and experts have expressed their views and opinions about groups, their activities and ways to limit them. Since the group is rightly or wrongly associated and identified with Islam in its activities, experts especially the ulama analyze the group from an Islamic perspective using the Qur'an and Sunnah and the actions of the salaf as their basis for offering solutions. to group problems. With this background, this paper examines the role of Ulama in dealing with the imbroglio of Boko Haram by using the Ulama model of Al Azhar University in particular. The historical method was adopted with data mostly collected from printed materials and the internet. This paper recommends among other things that our scholars should follow some of the approaches used by Al'azhar scholars in eliminating the influence of extremist and rebel groups.

The Role of Ulama in Countering Boko Haram Insurgency: A Pattern of the Al-Azhar ‘Ulama

The eruption of Boko Haram and its insurgency in 2009 caused the loss of life and property that is unprecedented in northern Nigeria's history since independence. Various tools and approaches have been used in analyzing a phenomenon with a view to offering solutions to it. People from various walks of life including professionals and experts have expressed their views and opinions about groups, their activities and ways to limit them. Since the group is rightly or wrongly associated and identified with Islam in its activities, experts especially the ulama analyze the group from an Islamic perspective using the Qur'an and Sunnah and the actions of the salaf as their basis for offering solutions. to group problems. With this background, this paper examines the role of Ulama in dealing with the imbroglio of Boko Haram by using the Ulama model of Al Azhar University in particular. The historical method was adopted with data mostly collected from printed materials and the internet. This paper recommends among other things that our scholars should follow some of the approaches used by Al'azhar scholars in eliminating the influence of extremist and rebel groups.

Synthesis of Mn(II) and Fe(II) Complexes with Ethylenediamine and Acetylacetonate Ligands

Synthesis of acetylacetonato, ethylenediamine manganese (II) complex and acetylacetonato, ethylenediamine iron (II) complex were carried out, a pale yellow and brown solids were obtained from the reaction.  The solubility tests of the complexes were carried out, in which manganese (II) complex was found to be soluble in water, methanol and ethanol and insoluble in chloroform and petroleum ether while the iron (II) complex was found to be slightly soluble in water, methanol and ethanol and insoluble in chloroform and petroleum ether. The UV visible spectra of manganese (II) complex showed absorption maximum at around 480nm, and infrared spectra of manganese (II) complex showed absorption band at 1725cm-1. Keywords: Acetylacetone, manganese, iron, ethylenediamine

NOSE-TO-BRAIN DELIVERY, A ROUTE OF CHOICE FOR TARGETING BRAIN TUMORS

Brain tumours are the most lethal type of cancer, which is difficult to manage due to the inherent suboptimal bioavailability of the chemotherapy agent at tumour sites, consequent of high levels of protection of physiological blood-brain barrier (BBB), blood tumour barrier (BTB) and blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier (CSF). Improving the permeability of these barriers would enhance the disease's clinical prognosis and promote patients' quality of life. To this end, scientists have conducted several studies to determine the most suitable route for CNS delivery. Most of which show that the nose-to-brain is proposed to be the most convenient, efficacious and clinically beneficial non-invasive means of delivering chemotherapeutic agents directly to the brain. Therefore, this study compares the therapeutic benefits of intranasal and other conventional brain delivery systems and further evaluates the clinical benefits of using different nanocarriers for brain tumour targeting. However, we surveyed the literature by conducting an in-depth search of the research keywords and their combinations in recognized scientific databases, primarily Science Direct, PubMed, Google Scholar, and Research Gate. Our findings have shown that the nose-to-brain delivery of chemotherapeutics is a breakthrough in bypassing the effects of BBB, BTB, and CSF barriers, improving the delivery of drugs to the brain for specific tumour targeting with desired clinical prognosis

Entrepreneurial and Market Orientation Relationship to Performance: The Role of Business Environment

The purpose of the study is to examine the moderating effects of business environment on the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO), market orientation (MO) and business performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Nigeria. This study seeks to resolve the inconsistencies found in the contemporary literature concerning the relationship between EO, MO and business performance. A planned questionnaire using a 5-point Likert scale was adopted from previous works to determine the respondents’ response. A survey research design was adopted and self - administered questionnaires were used to collect the data from 640 owner/managers of SMEs. The analysis was carried using SPSS version 20, the results of the study indicated that entrepreneurial orientation has a significant and positive relationship with business performance; a negative relationship is reported between market orientation and business performance. The study also found that business environment does not moderate the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation and business performance of SMEs. Owner/ managers, regulatory agencies, government, and other stakeholders will benefit from the study findings, and future research direction provided. Keywords: Entrepreneurial orientation, Market orientation, Business Environment, Business Performance, SMEs

N-GRAM BASED QUERY STRUCTURING SYSTEM FOR EFFECTIVE XML RETRIEVAL

Query structuring systems are keyword search systems recently used for the effective retrieval of XML documents. Existing systems fail to put keyword query ambiguity prob-lems into consideration during query pre-processing and return irrelevant predicate nodes. As a result, these sys-tems return irrelevant results. In this research, an XML keyword search system, called N-gram based XML query structuring system (NBXQSS) is developed to improve the performance of keyword searches. The NBXQSS uses an N-gram Based Query Segmentation (NBQS) method which interprets a user query as a list of semantic units to help resolve ambiguity. The system also introduces an improved predicate identification algorithm (IPIA) to return rele-vant predicates. The IPIA uses a proposed function to com-pute the query term proximity and ordering. The effective-ness of the NBXQS is demonstrated through experimental performance study on some real-world XML documents. The results show that the developed system performs bet-ter compared to the existing system in terms of precision

Characteristics of Different Type of Coarse Aggregate on Properties of High Performance Concrete

The weakest links of conventional cement concrete is often occurred at the transition zone around coarse aggregate particles and the bulk of the compressive load is also borne by the cement paste. However, in special concrete such as High Strength Concrete (HSC) and High Performance Concrete (HPC) where, the water/cement ratio is low and high content of cement constitute their characteristics, the bulk compressive load is borne by the aggregate. Therefore, the failure in such concrete is mostly through the aggregate. This study discussed the characteristics of different type of coarse aggregate with distinct size range, 20-14mm and 10-5mm on properties of high performance concrete. In this project, investigation such as Slump test and Unit weight were carried out on fresh properties, and also compressive strength and water absorption on hardened properties, in which, readings were taken at curing days of 7 days, 14 days, and 28 days. The water to cement ratio used is 0.35, 1% super plasticizer of  Conplast SP-430 were added, and the dosage of meta kaolin added was  0%, 7.5% and 15%. The HPC mix, grade M40concrete is designed as per ACI method. The result of the study indicated that the compressive strength increases with an increase in percentage of Metakaolin between 0% to 15% replacements. Basalt-mixed concrete gives higher compressive strength, followed by gneiss-mixed concrete, then granite-mixed concrete. It was also discovered that larger aggregate sizes (20mm-14mm) gives high compressive strength than smaller sizes (5mm-10mm). Therefore for optimum performance up to 15% replacement of Metakaolin can be used with 20mm-14mm sizes of basalt aggregate

Economic regimes and stock market performance in Nigeria: Evidence from regime switching model

The paper analyzes volatility spillover between exchange rate and stock market in “turbulent” and “calm”, otherwise, “bull” and “bear” periods in the Nigerian stock market from 1st January, 2010 to 31st December, 2017 using a regime heteroskedastic Markov switching model in line with Kim (1993). The approach allows regime shift in both mean and variance of a series where failure to allow for regime shift leads to an overstatement of persistence of the variance, Lamoureuex and Lastrapes (1990). Results from preliminary investigations reveal that both stock returns and exchange rate series are characterized with non- normal distribution, presence of unit root and ARCH effects. Further, evidence of two regimes, that is, bear and bull markets, was established with higher persistence, that is, high transition probabilities, in the bear as against the bull market at 0.9455 and 0.8686, respectively. However, duration of stay in the regime is higher in the bull market (regime 2) than in the bear market (regime 1) at 5958.12 days and 18.406 days, respectively. Further, analysis of volatility spillover between exchange rate and stock returns reveals that returns increases due to appreciation in the exchange rate in the bear market and diminishes in response to exchange rate depreciation in the bull market. Thus, adverse economic conditions leading to exchange rate volatility diminishes stock market returns by increasing investors’ risk perception, especially in the bull market. No doubt, the findings are important to investors, regulators and monetary authorities

Graphical User Interface (GUI) for Position and Trajectory Tracking Control of the Ball and Plate System Using H-Infinity Controller

In this paper, a graphical user interface (GUI) for position and trajectory tracking of the ball and plate system (BPS) control scheme using the double feedback loop structure i.e. a loop within a loop is proposed. The inner and the outer loop was designed using linear algebraic method by solving a set of Diophantine equations and  sensitivity function. The results were simulated in MATLAB 2018a, and the trajectory tracking was displayed on a GUI, which showed that the plate was able to be stabilized at a time of 0.3546 seconds, and also the ball settled at 1.7087 seconds, when a sinusoidal circular reference trajectory of radius 0.4m with an angular frequency of 1.57rad/sec was applied to the BPS, the trajectory tracking error was 0.0095m.  This shows that the controllers possess the following properties for the BPS, which are; good adaptability, strong robustness and a high control performance.