Information needs and access of Members of Vigilante in Adamawa State, North -East Nigeria

ABSTRACT The study investigated the Information needs and access of Members of Vigilante in Adamawa state, North-eastern Nigeria, one of the three states bedeviled by the Boko Haram insurgency. Quantitative research methodology and Cross-sectional survey design was applied for the study. The population of the study comprised of One Thousand Four Hundred Members (1400) drawn from Nineteen (19) local governments areas in the state. Krejcie and Morgan Table (1970) was used to draw (302) members as sample of the population, while Walpole’s (1982) formula for proportions was used in arriving at a sample for each stratum (i.e. each local government area). In collecting data, a total of Three Hundred and Two (302) copies of questionnaires were administered, and Two Hundred and Forty 240 copies (79.47%) were returned and found useful. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics. The outcome of the study revealed that the information needs of members were daily mainly work related and from informal sources, as there were no public libraries/information centers in 17 local governments’ areas of the state. The outcome of the research also revealed barriers to information access to include general lack of formal information infrastructure such as libraries/information centers, poor and unreliable informal information sources, as well as lack of training on information literacy skills for members of Vigilante. It is recommended that there is a need for those involved in vigilante information delivery to continuously examine and identify evolving information needs of members of vigilante in order to meet such needs. Government should resuscitate the dying public libraries in all the local government areas of Adamawa state to provide information services. Libraries should organize training on information literacy and other information use skills for members of vigilante, because if this is done, it will enhance and improve information access across communities in Adamawa state. Finally, information resources be repackaged in order to take care of challenges of proximity to sources of information, language barrier and other challenges faced by members of vigilante

Organisational Capability in Internalising Quality Culture in Higher Institution

The study examines the influence of leadership roles related to organisational capability consisting of directing setting, strategic and organisational process, alignment, intervention and strategic capability on depending variable internalising quality culture in IIUM. The study used 100 samples consisting of lecturers, non-academic staff and students drew through purposive sampling in Gombak campus. The study employed descriptive and multiple regression analysis (MRA) in analysing the data. The results revealed that predictors directing setting, strategic and organisational processes and strategic capabilities significantly influenced internalising quality culture in IIUM. Keywords: Leadership, leadership roles, quality, quality culture, IIU

Landholders’ Involvement in the Compulsory Acquisition of Land and Compensation Process in Bauchi, Nigeria

This study aims to assess landholder’s involvement in the compulsory acquisition of land on their satisfaction with the compensation process in Bauchi, Nigeria, to identify areas of weakness in the process and propose areas of improvement. The study adopted the use of a quantitative approach and data were collected through a questionnaire survey from 327 landholders affected by the compulsory acquisition and compensation exercise by the Bauchi State Government. The data collected were subjected to descriptive with mean ranking, frequency distribution. The study revealed that before the process of compulsory acquisition landholders were very well involved, during the process of compulsory acquisition they were also involved but at the compensation process, they were not involved at all. It recommended that Landholders should be involved not only in the process of compulsory acquisition but they should be involved in the process of compensation as it will minimize resistance to compulsory

Organisational capability in internalising quality culture in higher institution

The study examines the influence of leadership roles related to organisational capability consisting of directing setting, strategic and organisational process, alignment, intervention and strategic capability on depending variable internalising quality culture in IIUM. The study used 100 samples consisting of lecturers, non-academic staff and students drew through purposive sampling in Gombak campus. The study employed descriptive and multiple regression analysis (MRA) in analysing the data. The results revealed that predictors directing setting, strategic and organisational processes and strategic capabilities significantly influenced internalising quality culture in IIUM

Automatic Classification of Equivalent Mutants in Mutation Testing of Android Applications

Software and symmetric testing methodologies are primarily used in detecting software defects, but these testing methodologies need to be optimized to mitigate the wasting of resources. As mobile applications are becoming more prevalent in recent times, the need to have mobile applications that satisfy software quality through testing cannot be overemphasized. Testing suites and software quality assurance techniques have also become prevalent, which underscores the need to evaluate the efficacy of these tools in the testing of the applications. Mutation testing is one such technique, which is the process of injecting small changes into the software under test (SUT), thereby creating mutants. These mutants are then tested using mutation testing techniques alongside the SUT to determine the effectiveness of test suites through mutation scoring. Although mutation testing is effective, the cost of implementing it, due to the problem of equivalent mutants, is very high. Many research works gave varying solutions to this problem, but none used a standardized dataset. In this research work, we employed a standard mutant dataset tool called MutantBench to generate our data. Subsequently, an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) was used in conjunction with a tree-based convolutional neural network (TBCNN) as our deep learning model to automate the classification of the equivalent mutants to reduce the cost of mutation testing in software testing of android applications. The result shows that the proposed model produces a good accuracy rate of 94%, as well as other performance metrics such as recall (96%), precision (89%), F1-score (92%), and Matthew’s correlation coefficients (88%) with fewer False Negatives and False Positives during testing, which is significant as it implies that there is a decrease in the risk of misclassification.publishedVersio

Accessibility and Utilization of Information Resources by Academic Staff of Federal University Gusau amid Telecommunication shutdown in Zamfara State.

The study investigates accessibility and utilization of information resources by academic staff of Federal University Gusau amid telecommunication shut down in Zamafara state. The researchers adopted quantitative research method using cross sectional survey design. Simple random sampling was adopted for the study and the Sample size of 169 was determined using Krejcie and Morgan table. Data was collected using questionnaire and the data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics with the help of statistical package for social science (SPSS). The finding revealed that majority of the respondents strongly agreed that visiting libraries and offline databases in the electronic library served as opportunity of accessing information during the internet shut down in the state. The study further found that books materials, newspaper and journal are the available and most utilized resources by the academic staff of the university during the shutdown. Similarly, the study found out that information accessed and utilized by the staff during the period was for manly lecture note preparation, research purpose, knowledge sharing and personal communication. the study also revealed that the staff encountered some challenges while accessing and utilizing the information during the period that include time constraint, insufficient information richness of the alternative source compared to the internet, poor personal communication, inadequate information for preparing lecture note and inadequate information for research. The study recommended that academic staff of the university be encouraged to access and utilize information from various sources, library in the university should double its efforts of creating awareness of the existence of various sources of information in the library and lastly the need for the academic staff of the university to keep themselves abreast with the various technique of accessing the alternatives sources information

Landholders' Satisfaction with Compulsory Acquisition and Compensation Process in Bauchi, Nigeria

This research aims to assess Landholder's satisfaction with the compulsory acquisition and compensation process in Bauchi to identify areas of weakness in the process and propose areas of improvement. The study adopted the quantitative approach and data collected through questionnaire survey from 327 landholders affected by the compulsory acquisition and compensation exercise by the Bauchi State Government. The data collected were subjected to descriptive with mean ranking, frequency distribution. The study revealed that landholders were very satisfied before the process of compulsory acquisition, during the process of mandatory purchase, they were also happy. Still, during the compensation process, they were very dissatisfied. It recommended that the Government should make the process of compensation more transparent

Landholders’ Awareness of Compulsory Acquisition of Land and Compensation Process in Bauchi, Nigeria

This study aims to assess landholder’s awareness of compulsory acquisition of land on their satisfaction with the compensation process in Bauchi, Nigeria, to identify areas of weakness in the process and propose areas of improvement. The study adopted the use of a quantitative approach and data were collected through a questionnaire survey from 327 landholders affected by the compulsory acquisition and compensation exercise by the Bauchi State Government. The data collected were subjected to descriptive with mean ranking, frequency distribution. The study revealed that the respondents are aware of the process before the compulsory acquisition and during the process of compulsory acquisition they were also aware of. This means that the respondents agreed that they were aware of the process/procedures involved in compulsory land acquisition, laws, and procedures guiding compulsory land acquisition and compensation process. It recommended that Landholders should be made more aware of the process involved in compulsory acquisition and compensation not only at inception but up to the end of the exercise

Public Infrastructure Provision in Bauchi Metropolis, Nigeria

This study aims to assess the Public infrastructure provision in Bauchi Metropolis, Nigeria, to propose areas of improvement. The study adopted the use of a quantitative approach and data were collected through a questionnaire survey from 382 house head holds proportionate selected from the target population in Bauchi metropolis. The data collected were subjected to descriptive with mean ranking, frequency distribution. The study revealed that communication facilities were the most provided facility provision, followed by market facilities and water facilities provision. Solid waste disposal facilities and fire protection services were the least facilities provided in the study area. It recommended that public infrastructural facilities provided in the area should be based on the resident’s preference and need

Remediation of soil contaminated with toxic organic compounds using microorganisms

Microorganisms, especially genetically modified microorganisms have continued to attract attention as a safer and environmentally friendly alternative in the bioremediation of contaminated environments such as soil and water bodies. Soil pollution by organic compounds such as pesticides, industrial and agricultural solvents, dyes, pigments, additives etc. is on the increase worldwide as a result of industrialization and agricultural modernization. Toxicity from these and other related pollutants have constituted a major challenge to humans as well as the environment. Therefore, it is important to apply effective remediation measures to reduce the levels of these toxicants so as to minimize the risk of bioaccumulation in agricultural food products. Bioremediation using biological materials viz; whole cells, cell extracts, isolated enzymes etc. is one of the most effective and environmentally friendly approaches currently in use. This paper therefore, reviews the current microbial remediation strategies of soil contaminated with various organic pollutants.Keywords: Bioremediation, Microorganisms, Pollutants, Soil, Organi