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Developing Domain Ontology for Nigerian History

Abstract

Background: Nigeria, which is the most populous country in Africa, located in the West of Africa has a rich political and cultural history. Although, Nigeria has a valid history, the documentation of a significant portion of the historical information is vague and anecdotal because a lot of it is oral, which makes it susceptible to distortion. There is also poor electronic documentation, with a large chunk of history captured in print - history books, media report and museum artifacts. Objective: To develop a domain ontology for Nigerian history which is intended to provide viable support for sundry automation needs that require historical knowledge. Results: The NHO (Nigerian History Ontology) has been developed using a semi- automated approach that involved extraction of terms from textual sources and eventual conceptualization, modeling, and development using the Protégé Ontology Editor. The NHO (Nigerian History Ontology) developed ontology reveals a potential to competently support knowledge-based software endeavor. Also compared with Gold Standard ontology, it was found to be rich in content. Conclusion: We have presented the details of the process of developing a domain ontology for Nigeria history, which is the first of its kind in terms of focus (Nigeria), and perspectives (political, cultural). The NHO is a documentation of Nigerian historical knowledge for meaningful use, which makes the knowledge useful by both humans and software agents. It also provides an electronic archive of Nigerian history in a compact and easily accessible way

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