Towards National Integration in Nigeria: Jumping the Hurdles

Since the inception of the Nigerian nation, Nigerian governments, past and present, have made serious efforts to propagate policies and programmes that are geared towards national integration. Despite such well-intended and unity-oriented programmes and policies, Nigeria’s unity has continued to be plagued and threatened by embedded socio-cultural, religious and political dichotomies. Unless efforts are made to checkmate these divisive tendencies towards national integration, the long expected and loudly proclaimed oneness and indivisibility of Nigeria will remain a utopia. This paper, silhouetted against the backdrop of structural functionalism, advocates the necessity for national integration and the factors that are militating against the much desired national unity in Nigeria. Suggestions are made on how Nigeria can achieve national integration. This paper believes that achieving national integration is contingent on jumping the hurdles of ethnicity, corruption, a narcissistic political leadership, weak institutions and others. It concludes that to claim the victory for an integrated Nigeria, the people must lead the vanguard of change and that for the continued existence of Nigeria to be guaranteed probably for another centennial, consensual agreement must be reached by its diverse ethnic nationalitie

Collective Behaviour and Social Movements:a Conceptual Review

Collective behaviour and social movements have been instrumental in engendering social change, including regime change, and impacting the policy space in many societies. In fact, in the past 200 years, they have become a part of the popular and global expression of dissent. The political class, supported by elite groups and state institutions, most times, does not concede to popular demands until some form of public agitation and ruckus is witnessed. Therefore, social researchers have contemplated the rationale behind social change or social statics. This is because a decipherment of what social change drivers are will help social researchers better understand these “forces”, know how to manage or regulate them and how or when to predict social change or otherwise. In Nigeria, an instance of social dynamics was the role Organised Labour and Civil Society groups played in vociferously demanding the return to democratic rule after many years under statocratic hegemony. This was achieved through the expression of different organised collective actions which forced the military overlords in power to acquiesce and capitulate to democratic governance. Akin to this, the passage of the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill by the legislature in Nigeria was an upshot of years of agitation by the intelligentsia, members of the fourth estate of the realm and the civil society sector. The FOI bill was conceived with the aim to hold the political and economic managers of the state more accountable to the people. This paper seeks to carry out a conceptual review of collective behaviour and social movements with some reflections on the Nigerian experienc

Government Size, Openness and Income Risk Nexus: New Evidence from Some African Countries

Empirical evidence for the compensation hypothesis holds that trade openness independent of income risk has no significant effects on government size. Hence, using time series data for the period 1965-2013 from Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa and applying the bounds test method of cointegration, this paper investigates the nature of the relationship between openness, income risk, terms of trade volatility and income per capita on government size in each of the 5 African countries. Our empirical findings show a long-run relationship particularly in Egypt and Ghana and a limited evidence for other countries. Similarly, after applying both the Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) and Fully Modified OLS (FM-OLS) on original data and Moving Average (MV) converted data, our findings vary across the countries due to country-specific factors. Hence, the evidence we find does not support the compensation hypothesis. However, we observe significant positive effects of income per capita on government size for each country and some evidence of the mitigating and cushioning effects of governments when exposed to income risks and volatility due to trade openness. We therefore suggest some appropriate policy recommendations for the selected countries

Camouflages and Token Manipulations-The Changing Faces of the Nigerian Fraudulent 419 Spammers

The inefficiencies of current spam filters against fraudulent (419) mails is not unrelated to the use by spammers of good-word attacks, topic drifts, parasitic spamming, wrong categorization and recategorization of electronic mails by e-mail clients and of course the fuzzy factors of greed and gullibility on the part of the recipients who responds to fraudulent spam mail offers. In this paper, we establish that mail token manipulations remain, above any other tactics, the most potent tool used by Nigerian scammers to fool statistical spam filters. While hoping that the uncovering of these manipulative evidences will prove useful in future antispam research, our findings also sensitize spam filter developers on the need to inculcate within their antispam architecture robust modules that can deal with the identified camouflages

Staffing Patterns of State Colleges of Education Libraries in Nigeria

The College of Education system is one of the tripods of tertiary education in Nigeria and it has the primary role of training teachers who will be awarded the minimum teaching qualification of Nigerian Certificate of Education (NCE). This certificate qualifies one to teach in junior secondary schools and technical colleges in Nigeria and it takes three years to complete. These teachers’ institutions were formally known as Advanced Teachers’ Colleges and were affiliated to different universities in Nigeria. They were later transformed into Colleges of Education under the supervision of one umbrella body known as the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) established in 1989. There are 64 colleges of education in Nigeria, classified according to their ownership; hence, we have 20 federal, 39 state, 1military and 4 private colleges of education. The state colleges of education are established and funded by their respective State governments. (NCCE, 1996, NCCE, 2002)

Conversion of lignocellulose from palm (Elaeis guineensis) fruit fibre and physic (Jatropha curcas) nut shell into bio-oil

Harmful gases are released into the atmosphere through burning of residues which is commonly practiced in Nigeria and can be attributed to climate change issues. Agricultural residues have the potentials to be used as energy and chemical source and meet its deficit in the country. This paper focuses on utilization of lignocellulosic materials obtained from two agricultural residues through renewable technology to produce bio-energy and chemical feedstock. The lignocellulosic materials were extracted from palm fruit (Elaeis guineensis) fibre and physic nut (Jatropha curcas) shell, and pyrolyzed under low temperature and pressure at various particle sizes. The main properties of solid (lignocellulosic) materials were tested and the bio-oil produced was analyzed using GC-MS. Results show proximate analyses (volatile, ash and fixed carbon contents) and ultimate analysis (carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, magnesium, phosphorus and zinc). The pH value of the bio-oil from both residues increased with increase in temperatures. The density, viscosity and calorific value of the palm and physic residue oil are 831.99 and 947.5 kg/m3, 0.695 and 1.58 cPa at room temperature, 22.33 and 14.169 kJ/g, respectively. Aromatics and other compounds are major dominant compounds in the palm fruit fibre oil which is characterized for bio-fuel production. Physic nut shell oil contains aromatic ethers, cyclic ethers, secondary amides and organic halogen compound which are important chemical feedstock. Conversion of these residues to useful products will alleviate the energy supply deficit, improve social and economic development, promote clean and healthy atmosphere of the nation and significantly contribute to global climate change mitigation