Factors Influencing Innovative Behaviour of Teachers in Secondary Schools in the North East of Nigeria

Innovative behaviour (IB) refers to the process of developing, generating, applying or promoting new ideas by employees to increase job performance. Today, the rapid social and technological changes in our environment highlight the significance of IB of employees and especially for teachers. Thus, this paper aimed to develop a conceptual framework of factors influencing innovative behaviour of teachers in secondary schools. The research was explored through critical related literature analysis. Findings were presented in form of descriptive analysis, which shows that workplace happiness (WP), organisational climate (OC), affective commitment (AF) and transformational leadership (TFL) play a direct role in affecting innovative behaviour. The paper concludes that WP, OC, AF and TL have a positive impact in creating the essential conditions to encourage teachers to show IB in schools

Public relations perspectives on electoral reforms as a panacea for consolidating Nigeria’s democracy

Abstract. Electoral reforms have been considered as sustainable means of improving on the quality of elections in Nigeria, this is especially as it avails the country, tremendous opportunities in admitting new policies such as new techniques, technologies and improved systems of protecting the welfare of electorates. It is evident from the literature that, public relations overtime has been a unifying factor in accelerating Nigeria’s democracy and sustaining its need for periodic elections and encouraging the conduct of free, fair and transparent elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).  Based on the level of malpractices and issues associated with the conduct of elections in Nigeria, it was concluded in this paper that, there are several benefits attached to the process of electoral reforms in Nigeria, hence, it gives government the opportunity to revamp its electoral policies through campaigns, introduction of new technologies, voting and more importantly, the nature of conducting elections bearing in mind that, poorly adopted electoral policies normally lead to the outbreak of crisis from aggrieved parties.  It is recommended amongst others that, government at all levels should consider periodic electoral reforms as a strategy for development and as such; they should ensure that only people with credibility are charged with the mandate of presiding over electoral reform committees (ERC).Keywords. Electoral reforms, Public relations, Democracy and elections.JEL. D72, D73, D78

AN ELUCIDATION OF THE POSITION OF WOMEN BEFORE THE ADVENT OF ISLAM AS DESCRIBED IN THE GLORIOUS QUR’AN

Before the advent of Islam, the position of women varied widely across different regions and cultures. It is important to note that the following information provides a general overview and may not apply uniformly to all societies of that time. Pre-Islamic Arabia: In pre-Islamic Arabia, women's status varied greatly depending on tribal customs and traditions. Some tribes practiced female infanticide, considering daughters a burden, while others valued women as members of the community. Women were often married off at a young age and had limited rights in matters of inheritance, divorce, and property ownership. Polygamy was prevalent, and women were sometimes treated as objects of trade. The position of women in pre-Islamic Arabia was varied, depending on their social status and tribal affiliation. However, in general, women had few rights and were often treated as second-class citizens. They were not allowed to own property, inherit, or testify in court. They could be married off without their consent, and they could be divorced by their husbands at will. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to expose these issues in details. Also, the paper explains the status of women in Roman period, in Jews period and in the Christian era. The method used in conducting this research is analytical method

An Appraisal of Legal and Administrative Framework for Combating Terrorist Financing and Money Laundering in Nigeria

Global financial stability hinges on collective action at the international level, but also an effective national system.  Robust anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism regimes are important pillars of the international regulatory and supervising systems and are part and parcel of the current efforts to strengthen the global financial system.  It is clear that Nigerian government has demonstrated commitment by putting in place legislative and enforcement framework for the implementation of international instruments for combating terrorist financing and money laundering.  The commitment culminated in vesting enforcement powers to the law enforcement and regulatory bodies.  These bodies complemented the provisions of the laws by providing comprehensive regulatory and supervisory frameworks for combating terrorist financing and money laundering. In spite of the efforts of the enforcement and regulatory agencies, much is still left to be desired.  This is because the perpetrators are professionals and highly placed persons in the society.  For these reasons, terrorist financing and money laundering continue to evolve assuming new scope and applying new tactics.  The promulgation of laws and the establishment of new regulatory or law enforcement institutions alone are not sufficient to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.  They must be supported by strong political will on the part of the government and real and meaningful implementation of the laws through investigations, prosecutions and convictions to give credibility to such laws.  In this regard, international cooperation and mutual assistance in investigations, prosecutions and law enforcement are critically necessary in view of the transnational features of money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Keywords: Legal, Administrative, Framework, Terrorist Financing, Money Launderin

Consumers’ safety of some selected ready to eat and street vended foods in Wudil, Kano state as determined by microbial content

Because of their cost, affordability, availability and simplicity to prepare, ready-to-eat foods are highly consumed in all over Nigeria, therefore critical to Nigerians’ health. This research aimed at ascertaining the consumers’ safety in terms of microbial load in ready-to-eat sell on the street Awara (Steamed Cowpea Beans Slurry) and Moin-moin (Bean pie) sold in three different vending locations retailed to the students of Aliko Dangote University of Science and Technology Wudil, Kano state Nigeria. Total of 24 samples consisting of equal quantity of Awara (Bean pie) and Moin-moin (Steamed Cowpea Bean Slurry) were collected from three different location in Wudil town and analyzed for total aerobic bacteria, fungi and Staphyococcus count. Seven different species of microorganism of health concern were identified to include Micrococcus spp, Staphylococcus aureous, Bacillus spp., Klebsiella spp., Mucor, Rhizophus stoonifer and Aspergillus flavus. The total mean of the aerobic bacteria, fungi and Staphylococcus count across all the location in all the samples were found to be withing the tolerable range with the standard set by the International Commission for Microbial Specification for Foods (ICMSF) and Food and Environmental Hygiene Standard (FEHD) as well as the South Wales Food Authority Standards for ready-to-eat foods. Higher microbial counts were founds on Moin-moin sample and this may be attributed to its high moisture content which is found to range from 64.2 to 70.0 %. The comparison of this research finding with international standard justified the safety of consumers and concludes the acceptability of these foods as safe to eat even though the presence of microorganisms such as Aspergilus spp. has been found to pose serious public health issue such as aflatoxin intoxicatio

AN ANALYSIS OF THE WOMEN’S RIGHT IN ISLAM FROM THE QUR’ANIC VERSES AND AHADITH

Allah (SWT) has created both men and women without subordination of one another. Islam has ensured gender equality and women’s rights in every sphere of their life. Islam has guaranteed rights of men and women in an equal degree and there is no discrimination between men and women. But due to the prevailing socio-cultural norms and practices in Bangladesh sometimes the guarantee of Islam do not get translated into tangible actions. Islam is the religion which liberated Muslim women by ensuring equal rights to them in comparison to their male fellow.. The prime object of this study is to pick out how rights of women are ensured in Islam. This study concludes with an allusion that women are not subordinate of men and indicate an avenue to identify properly women in the light of Islam. This research is actually qualitative in nature where only secondary data has been used. Analytical method was also used in this research. Data has been collected from various books, journals, Glorious Qur’an and Sunnah (tradition) of the Prophet (peace be upon him). This research finds that Islam does not deprive the women rather ensuring proper rights, dignity and status this research includes only those rights of the women as guaranteed by Islam and it does not include constitutional rights or other rights ensured by the existing laws of the country

Bridging the Digital Divide in Local Government: The Study of Internet Access and Digital Literacy in Nigeria Rural Area

Internet access and digital literacy is still lagging in the rural communities of Garun-Malam local government and there are needs to investigate the reasons behind this unfortunate situation in order to overcome this digital handicap. Of course, good access to information technology (IT) is the fundamental element of any rural development activities. Therefore, this study focuses in depth the Internet access and digital literacy (in terms of Internet technology applications skills) in the rural areas of Garun-Malam local government in Kano State, Nigeria. The purpose of the study is to investigate accessibility level of the Internet (the technological infrastructures being used), and the level of Internet technology applications skills among the rural communities. Therefore, the study employs quantitative data analysis method, 150 questionnaires were distributed, collected and analyzed for the selected rural areas. From the results, it shows that many respondents have access to Internet, despite the fact that there are poor IT infrastructures used in all the rural communities. The study also reveals that majority of the respondents does not have basic skills of Internet technology applications. Furthermore, this study will usher a new era for its internal values and the results can be used by both State and local government. However, the outcome from this study may empower policy makers to makes decision/ suggestions in bridging the digital divide that exist in the rural area of Garun-Malam local government. Bridging the digital divide is such a need that requires immediate attention for any concerned government

AN ANALYSIS OF THE WOMEN’S RIGHT IN ISLAM FROM THE QUR’ANIC VERSES AND AHADITH

Allah (SWT) has created both men and women without subordination of one another. Islam has ensured gender equality and women’s rights in every sphere of their life. Islam has guaranteed rights of men and women in an equal degree and there is no discrimination between men and women. But due to the prevailing socio-cultural norms and practices in Bangladesh sometimes the guarantee of Islam do not get translated into tangible actions. Islam is the religion which liberated Muslim women by ensuring equal rights to them in comparison to their male fellow.. The prime object of this study is to pick out how rights of women are ensured in Islam. This study concludes with an allusion that women are not subordinate of men and indicate an avenue to identify properly women in the light of Islam. This research is actually qualitative in nature where only secondary data has been used. Analytical method was also used in this research. Data has been collected from various books, journals, Glorious Qur’an and Sunnah (tradition) of the Prophet (peace be upon him). This research finds that Islam does not deprive the women rather ensuring proper rights, dignity and status this research includes only those rights of the women as guaranteed by Islam and it does not include constitutional rights or other rights ensured by the existing laws of the country

Optimization of Adaptive Method for Data Reduction in Wireless Sensor Networks

The term ‘Wireless’ is a cordless technology where the nodes interact or exchange information with the sink node without wired intervention to exchange or transmit any information successfully. Characteristics of the present wireless sensor networks are applied to diverse technological furtherance in minimum power communications and very large-scale integration to sustained functionalities of sensing. Tremendous number of incentive observation and algometry of data are amassed from sensors in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) for the Internet of Things (IoT) applications such as environmental monitoring. However, continuous dissemination of the sensed data postulates eminent energy imbibing. Data reduction duress the sensor nodes to surcease transmitting the data when it is diffident about freshen up. One way to reduce this kind of energy imbibing is to minimize the amount of data exchanged across the sensors, therefore the research work aims to increase the communication and spatial prediction between the sensor nodes and the sink nodes. In this research work, an Optimization of Adaptive Method for Data Reduction in Wireless Sensor Networks was proposed and implemented. The work adopted a bulging haplotype of two decoupled Least-Mean-Square (LMS) windowed filters with varying length for approximating the immediate metrics values both at the sink and source node such that sensor nodes have to send only their next sensed values that diverse substantially (when a pre-determine threshold) from the anticipated values. The experiment conducted on a real- world dataset of about 2,313,682, which were collected from 54 Mica2dot sensors thus, MATLAB was used as a tool for the implementation. The research work aims to increase the communication model and spatial prediction, which is the limitation of the base paper. The results show that our approach (OAM-DR) has achieved up to 98% communication reduction while retaining or carrying a high accuracy, (i.e. the anticipated values have a digression of ±0.5 from actual data values)

Global risk factors affecting performance of construction firms in Abuja, Nigeria

The study assessed the Global Risk Factors (GRFs) affecting performance of Nigerian construction firms, with a view to identifying the most severe and appropriate risk response techniques. In order to achieve this aim, the severity of GRF across different categories of firms, and the risk response techniques most suitable for each GRF were examined. A total of 105 questionnaires were administered out of which a total of 49 were fully completed and returned. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data collected using Likert scales, while Analysis of variance was used to evaluate the similarities/differences in the views of different categories of construction firms. The findings show that most construction firms consider payment delays (mean = 2.65), poor project scope (mean = 2.40) and inadequate design information (mean = 2.39) as the most severe GRF affecting the performance of Nigeria construction firms. It was also discovered that, despite the high likelihood and impact of GRF such as; payment delays, design changes, and inflation/bank Interest rates amongst others, most firms still opted to “accept” them. On the other hand, poor project scopes, strikes, failure to meet clients need and all factors related to unethical practices were “avoided”, while all legal related risk factors were “mitigated”. It is hoped that these findings will help construction firms in developing countries such as Nigeria to be more aware of the effect of GRF in order to be able to assess them effectively before embarking on construction projects.Keywords: Global Risk Factors, Probabiity-Impact Metrix, Negative Risk, Risk Management, Semi-Quantitative Techniqu