With rising security challenges, Nigeria needs newer approaches to untangle the issues. This pres... more With rising security challenges, Nigeria needs newer approaches to untangle the issues. This presentation considers insecurity as ‘wicked problem’. These are problems difficult to solve because they are interconnected and interelated to other problems. Available data from secondary sources seem to connect insecurity issues to other social issues such as poverty, drug-abuse, population growth rate, inadequacy or lack of functional education and so on. These inturn fuels insecurity and the circle goes unending. Using systems thinking, this presentation examines the connection between insecurity issues, other social issues and how science and technology may be used as viable tools to untangle the issue of insecurity in Nigeria. Similarly, as the World is a global village insecurity issues can affect local places of origin and as well spiral or affect people in other, often remote, places. Thus, insecurity issues are consider to have both global impact and scale but with local implication as well. The debastating impact of insecurity is thus not only on the country of origin but could have global scale. The paper therefore considers insecurity as a ‘doom’, which if not broken will have a spiralling effect on the neighbours or even on the World. To break the spiralling doom, the paper use the three-steps, explore’, ‘explain’ and ‘strategise’, approach within ‘glocalisation’ framework. This approach enables understanding the local and global layers and actors that impact on, and, fuel insecurity in Nigeria. The paper concludes with a suggestion on how to use science and technology to break the spiralling doom.
Some developing countries face many challenges, which often lead their citizens to continue to li... more Some developing countries face many challenges, which often lead their citizens to continue to live in deprivation and want. Nigeria is one such country that has received low rankings on several fronts: particularly the state of its education sector. This paper adopts an ethnographic study method in order to investigate one of the poorly funded, over-crowded, and underachieving public primary schools in Northern Nigeria. The paper discusses an alternative approach the country could adopt to improve in its various efforts to enhance the provision of qualitative education to its citizens in public schools. Public schools in Nigeria are populated mostly by children from poor parents—and, as such, these schools have not been performing academically for various reasons. Some of these reasons include: insufficient government funding, a lack of quality teaching staff, poor school attendance by pupils (who often work to supplement their family income), pupil wastages, and others. To address these issues, this paper applies a social business approach to the case school. My findings suggests that public schools could adopt social business ventures to sustain themselves, provide jobs for poor parents, enhance conditions for pupils, improve the quality of the teaching and supporting staff, and meet the main objectives of establishing the schools in the first place: that is, the provision of quality education.
Journal of economics and sustainable development, 2017
Nigeria has the largest gas reserves in Africa and Gas pipeline industry has been in operation in... more Nigeria has the largest gas reserves in Africa and Gas pipeline industry has been in operation in the country since the gas discovery in the country in late 1960s. Lack of sufficient gas development infrastructure has caused energy imbalance in the country, and making the country rely heavily on the few existing pipelines, which makes the country’s energy sector vulnerable to any shock on these pipelines. Recently, the Nigerian government resolved to build new gas pipelines as part of its plan to maximise gas utilization. As such, this research analysed the economics of these possible gas pipelines options so as to assess if investment in new gas pipelines is viable in Nigeria and which of the pipeline route option is more viable. The research used gas pipeline models that already exist in literature to analyse the investment cost, gas deliveries as well as costs and benefits of six possible gas pipeline routes options in the country. The BSRO pipelines route option was found to be ...
Some developing countries face many challenges, which often lead their citizens to continue to li... more Some developing countries face many challenges, which often lead their citizens to continue to live in deprivation and want. Nigeria is one such country that has received low rankings on several fronts: particularly the state of its education sector. This paper adopts an ethnographic study method in order to investigate one of the poorly funded, over-crowded, and underachieving public primary schools in Northern Nigeria. The paper discusses an alternative approach the country could adopt to improve in its various efforts to enhance the provision of qualitative education to its citizens in public schools. Public schools in Nigeria are populated mostly by children from poor parents—and, as such, these schools have not been performing academically for various reasons. Some of these reasons include: insufficient government funding, a lack of quality teaching staff, poor school attendance by pupils (who often work to supplement their family income), pupil wastages, and others. To address...
Northeast Nigeria in recent years has been ravaged by Boko Haram insurgency. Boko Haram, a religi... more Northeast Nigeria in recent years has been ravaged by Boko Haram insurgency. Boko Haram, a religious insurgent group, poses threats to (mostly) the region and its citizens. Although the Nigerian military and its allies have regained most of the areas hitherto captured, defeating the group has proved challenging despite the multi-nation joint military forces. This is partly due to lack of understanding about causes relating to the emergence and continued existence of the group on one hand and factors that contribute to the growth of the group on the other. Poverty has been attributed to both the cause of the emergence and one of the most important factors that contribute to the growth of the group. Thus, drawing from two poverty theories, culture of poverty and ghetto poverty, this article examines how the interaction of internal and external poverty conditions within individuals explains the emergence and continued existence of Boko Haram in Nigeria. In addition, as various poverty ...
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) means different things to different people. To opponents, i... more Corporate social responsibility (CSR) means different things to different people. To opponents, it is a waste of corporate resources, while to its proponents it is essential for organizational survival. This paper reviews these divergent views of CSR, specifically considering the point of view of developing countries. The paper indicates that, whether CSR is considered as a necessary requirement for organizations or as a voluntary activity, it affects the economic growth and development of most developing countries. Developing countries and oil companies, either national or multinational, can team up with governments in economic growth and development. Interventions by oil and gas companies can be classified into two major issues: 'a thousand pebbles' aimed at addressing numerous small projects executed within various host communities and 'a big stone' aimed at helping developing counties to develop economically and environmentally. While pursuing the big stone, oil ...
This thesis, with a focus on the downstream petroleum sector in North-west Nigeria, investigates ... more This thesis, with a focus on the downstream petroleum sector in North-west Nigeria, investigates the impact of intentional, human-induced disruptions on supply chain integration (SCI) dimensions. Two theories were used as guiding principles; crisis theory that presents criminality as a crisis situation in the industry; and the resources-based view (RBV) that explains SCI according to the organisational capability to collaborate and gain advantages using the available resources. It also examines the extent to which safety/security initiatives (as resources) mitigate these disruptions. Following mixed-methods of quantitative-qualitative sequential explanatory research design, the relationships between criminal elements and the dimensions of SCI and organisational performance. Quantitative analyses, guided by sets of hypotheses tested using regression analysis, ranked the criminal elements in order of their impact on SCI dimensions and impact of SCI dimensions on organisational perform...
Violence is triggered by disagreements or contentious issues between two or more individuals, par... more Violence is triggered by disagreements or contentious issues between two or more individuals, parties, regions or nations. The consequences of violence are often undesirable, leading to disease, malnutrition, starvation, moral decadence (deterioration), poor economic performance of governments, boundary disputes, tribal divisions, the wanton destruction of lives, properties and so on. This paper uses the principles of negative emotion to understand the concept of violence as it occurs in Northern Nigeria. The paper further derives theoretical explanations from the principle that individuals have the power to let peace prevail through a focused consciousness and common structures of intelligibility. The process was based on 10 principles of understanding violence, which were derived from 14 negative emotion indicators or factors of violence in the study setting. Subject matter experts (SME), including security agencies, private security experts, victims of violence and religious leaders, were consulted to determine the interconnectedness between these emotions in trends and patterns of violence. Social network analysis was used as a tool to map the dynamics of emotions, which identified three negative emotions: desperation, frustration and anger. These were ranked in order of their occurrence in conflicts and subsequent violence. The paper also suggests means to reduce violence and conflict by understanding this 'trinity' of violence in the region.
Poverty, particularly in developing countries, is endemic and has attained a crisis stage. It is ... more Poverty, particularly in developing countries, is endemic and has attained a crisis stage. It is compounded by conflicts, corrupt/inefficient governments and other manmade issues that seem to keep people in perpetual deprivation and want. Although serious, this poverty trap is fixable. This paper reports on an ongoing research about poverty reduction strategies. It is based on the proposition that the first step in poverty reduction is understanding what makes an agent trapped. Therefore, this paper conceptualises poverty traps as fractal, self-perpetuating conditions when individuals are caught in a vicious cycle of poverty and continue to suffer from undesirable hardships for a long period of time. Using the neo-classical economic development theory and data obtained from the United Nations Development Programme, this paper argues that current poverty reduction strategies, which have been in use over the last five decades, have been ineffective. From the experiences of one of the authors in poverty reduction over the last two decades, a new poverty reduction strategy that focuses on individuals is thus proposed. This strategy uses the synergetic concept that indicates the simultaneous causation of poverty through the interaction between the individual and the context. This paper demonstrates that individuals in poverty are caught between externalisation and internalisation of conditions that are nonetheless transient and removable. Based on this new understanding, a four-stage interactive model called Learn, Relate and Adapt (LERA) is proposed for use in poverty research and the poverty reduction implementation strategy.
Violence is triggered by disagreements or contentious issues between two or more individuals, par... more Violence is triggered by disagreements or contentious issues between two or more individuals, parties, regions or nations. The consequences of violence are often undesirable, leading to disease, malnutrition, starvation, moral decadence (deterioration), poor economic performance of governments, boundary disputes, tribal divisions, the wanton destruction of lives, properties and so on. This paper uses the principles of negative emotion to understand the concept of violence as it occurs in Northern Nigeria. The paper further derives theoretical explanations from the principle that individuals have the power to let peace prevail through a focused consciousness and common structures of intelligibility. The process was based on 10 principles of understanding violence, which were derived from 14 negative emotion indicators or factors of violence in the study setting. Subject matter experts (SME), including security agencies, private security experts, victims of violence and religious leaders, were consulted to determine the interconnectedness between these emotions in trends and patterns of violence. Social network analysis was used as a tool to map the dynamics of emotions, which identified three negative emotions: desperation, frustration and anger. These were ranked in order of their occurrence in conflicts and subsequent violence. The paper also suggests means to reduce violence and conflict by understanding this 'trinity' of violence in the region.
Poverty, particularly in developing countries, is endemic and has attained a crisis stage. It is ... more Poverty, particularly in developing countries, is endemic and has attained a crisis stage. It is compounded by conflicts, corrupt/inefficient governments and other manmade issues that seem to keep people in perpetual deprivation and want. Although serious, this poverty trap is fixable. This paper reports on an ongoing research about poverty reduction strategies. It is based on the proposition that the first step in poverty reduction is understanding what makes an agent trapped. Therefore, this paper conceptualises poverty traps as fractal, self-perpetuating conditions when individuals are caught in a vicious cycle of poverty and continue to suffer from undesirable hardships for a long period of time. Using the neo-classical economic development theory and data obtained from the United Nations Development Programme, this paper argues that current poverty reduction strategies, which have been in use over the last five decades, have been ineffective. From the experiences of one of the authors in poverty reduction over the last two decades, a new poverty reduction strategy that focuses on individuals is thus proposed. This strategy uses the synergetic concept that indicates the simultaneous causation of poverty through the interaction between the individual and the context. This paper demonstrates that individuals in poverty are caught between externalisation and internalisation of conditions that are nonetheless transient and removable. Based on this new understanding, a four-stage interactive model called Learn, Relate and Adapt (LERA) is proposed for use in poverty research and the poverty reduction implementation strategy.
With rising security challenges, Nigeria needs newer approaches to untangle the issues. This pres... more With rising security challenges, Nigeria needs newer approaches to untangle the issues. This presentation considers insecurity as ‘wicked problem’. These are problems difficult to solve because they are interconnected and interelated to other problems. Available data from secondary sources seem to connect insecurity issues to other social issues such as poverty, drug-abuse, population growth rate, inadequacy or lack of functional education and so on. These inturn fuels insecurity and the circle goes unending. Using systems thinking, this presentation examines the connection between insecurity issues, other social issues and how science and technology may be used as viable tools to untangle the issue of insecurity in Nigeria. Similarly, as the World is a global village insecurity issues can affect local places of origin and as well spiral or affect people in other, often remote, places. Thus, insecurity issues are consider to have both global impact and scale but with local implication as well. The debastating impact of insecurity is thus not only on the country of origin but could have global scale. The paper therefore considers insecurity as a ‘doom’, which if not broken will have a spiralling effect on the neighbours or even on the World. To break the spiralling doom, the paper use the three-steps, explore’, ‘explain’ and ‘strategise’, approach within ‘glocalisation’ framework. This approach enables understanding the local and global layers and actors that impact on, and, fuel insecurity in Nigeria. The paper concludes with a suggestion on how to use science and technology to break the spiralling doom.
Some developing countries face many challenges, which often lead their citizens to continue to li... more Some developing countries face many challenges, which often lead their citizens to continue to live in deprivation and want. Nigeria is one such country that has received low rankings on several fronts: particularly the state of its education sector. This paper adopts an ethnographic study method in order to investigate one of the poorly funded, over-crowded, and underachieving public primary schools in Northern Nigeria. The paper discusses an alternative approach the country could adopt to improve in its various efforts to enhance the provision of qualitative education to its citizens in public schools. Public schools in Nigeria are populated mostly by children from poor parents—and, as such, these schools have not been performing academically for various reasons. Some of these reasons include: insufficient government funding, a lack of quality teaching staff, poor school attendance by pupils (who often work to supplement their family income), pupil wastages, and others. To address these issues, this paper applies a social business approach to the case school. My findings suggests that public schools could adopt social business ventures to sustain themselves, provide jobs for poor parents, enhance conditions for pupils, improve the quality of the teaching and supporting staff, and meet the main objectives of establishing the schools in the first place: that is, the provision of quality education.
Journal of economics and sustainable development, 2017
Nigeria has the largest gas reserves in Africa and Gas pipeline industry has been in operation in... more Nigeria has the largest gas reserves in Africa and Gas pipeline industry has been in operation in the country since the gas discovery in the country in late 1960s. Lack of sufficient gas development infrastructure has caused energy imbalance in the country, and making the country rely heavily on the few existing pipelines, which makes the country’s energy sector vulnerable to any shock on these pipelines. Recently, the Nigerian government resolved to build new gas pipelines as part of its plan to maximise gas utilization. As such, this research analysed the economics of these possible gas pipelines options so as to assess if investment in new gas pipelines is viable in Nigeria and which of the pipeline route option is more viable. The research used gas pipeline models that already exist in literature to analyse the investment cost, gas deliveries as well as costs and benefits of six possible gas pipeline routes options in the country. The BSRO pipelines route option was found to be ...
Some developing countries face many challenges, which often lead their citizens to continue to li... more Some developing countries face many challenges, which often lead their citizens to continue to live in deprivation and want. Nigeria is one such country that has received low rankings on several fronts: particularly the state of its education sector. This paper adopts an ethnographic study method in order to investigate one of the poorly funded, over-crowded, and underachieving public primary schools in Northern Nigeria. The paper discusses an alternative approach the country could adopt to improve in its various efforts to enhance the provision of qualitative education to its citizens in public schools. Public schools in Nigeria are populated mostly by children from poor parents—and, as such, these schools have not been performing academically for various reasons. Some of these reasons include: insufficient government funding, a lack of quality teaching staff, poor school attendance by pupils (who often work to supplement their family income), pupil wastages, and others. To address...
Northeast Nigeria in recent years has been ravaged by Boko Haram insurgency. Boko Haram, a religi... more Northeast Nigeria in recent years has been ravaged by Boko Haram insurgency. Boko Haram, a religious insurgent group, poses threats to (mostly) the region and its citizens. Although the Nigerian military and its allies have regained most of the areas hitherto captured, defeating the group has proved challenging despite the multi-nation joint military forces. This is partly due to lack of understanding about causes relating to the emergence and continued existence of the group on one hand and factors that contribute to the growth of the group on the other. Poverty has been attributed to both the cause of the emergence and one of the most important factors that contribute to the growth of the group. Thus, drawing from two poverty theories, culture of poverty and ghetto poverty, this article examines how the interaction of internal and external poverty conditions within individuals explains the emergence and continued existence of Boko Haram in Nigeria. In addition, as various poverty ...
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) means different things to different people. To opponents, i... more Corporate social responsibility (CSR) means different things to different people. To opponents, it is a waste of corporate resources, while to its proponents it is essential for organizational survival. This paper reviews these divergent views of CSR, specifically considering the point of view of developing countries. The paper indicates that, whether CSR is considered as a necessary requirement for organizations or as a voluntary activity, it affects the economic growth and development of most developing countries. Developing countries and oil companies, either national or multinational, can team up with governments in economic growth and development. Interventions by oil and gas companies can be classified into two major issues: 'a thousand pebbles' aimed at addressing numerous small projects executed within various host communities and 'a big stone' aimed at helping developing counties to develop economically and environmentally. While pursuing the big stone, oil ...
This thesis, with a focus on the downstream petroleum sector in North-west Nigeria, investigates ... more This thesis, with a focus on the downstream petroleum sector in North-west Nigeria, investigates the impact of intentional, human-induced disruptions on supply chain integration (SCI) dimensions. Two theories were used as guiding principles; crisis theory that presents criminality as a crisis situation in the industry; and the resources-based view (RBV) that explains SCI according to the organisational capability to collaborate and gain advantages using the available resources. It also examines the extent to which safety/security initiatives (as resources) mitigate these disruptions. Following mixed-methods of quantitative-qualitative sequential explanatory research design, the relationships between criminal elements and the dimensions of SCI and organisational performance. Quantitative analyses, guided by sets of hypotheses tested using regression analysis, ranked the criminal elements in order of their impact on SCI dimensions and impact of SCI dimensions on organisational perform...
Violence is triggered by disagreements or contentious issues between two or more individuals, par... more Violence is triggered by disagreements or contentious issues between two or more individuals, parties, regions or nations. The consequences of violence are often undesirable, leading to disease, malnutrition, starvation, moral decadence (deterioration), poor economic performance of governments, boundary disputes, tribal divisions, the wanton destruction of lives, properties and so on. This paper uses the principles of negative emotion to understand the concept of violence as it occurs in Northern Nigeria. The paper further derives theoretical explanations from the principle that individuals have the power to let peace prevail through a focused consciousness and common structures of intelligibility. The process was based on 10 principles of understanding violence, which were derived from 14 negative emotion indicators or factors of violence in the study setting. Subject matter experts (SME), including security agencies, private security experts, victims of violence and religious leaders, were consulted to determine the interconnectedness between these emotions in trends and patterns of violence. Social network analysis was used as a tool to map the dynamics of emotions, which identified three negative emotions: desperation, frustration and anger. These were ranked in order of their occurrence in conflicts and subsequent violence. The paper also suggests means to reduce violence and conflict by understanding this 'trinity' of violence in the region.
Poverty, particularly in developing countries, is endemic and has attained a crisis stage. It is ... more Poverty, particularly in developing countries, is endemic and has attained a crisis stage. It is compounded by conflicts, corrupt/inefficient governments and other manmade issues that seem to keep people in perpetual deprivation and want. Although serious, this poverty trap is fixable. This paper reports on an ongoing research about poverty reduction strategies. It is based on the proposition that the first step in poverty reduction is understanding what makes an agent trapped. Therefore, this paper conceptualises poverty traps as fractal, self-perpetuating conditions when individuals are caught in a vicious cycle of poverty and continue to suffer from undesirable hardships for a long period of time. Using the neo-classical economic development theory and data obtained from the United Nations Development Programme, this paper argues that current poverty reduction strategies, which have been in use over the last five decades, have been ineffective. From the experiences of one of the authors in poverty reduction over the last two decades, a new poverty reduction strategy that focuses on individuals is thus proposed. This strategy uses the synergetic concept that indicates the simultaneous causation of poverty through the interaction between the individual and the context. This paper demonstrates that individuals in poverty are caught between externalisation and internalisation of conditions that are nonetheless transient and removable. Based on this new understanding, a four-stage interactive model called Learn, Relate and Adapt (LERA) is proposed for use in poverty research and the poverty reduction implementation strategy.
Violence is triggered by disagreements or contentious issues between two or more individuals, par... more Violence is triggered by disagreements or contentious issues between two or more individuals, parties, regions or nations. The consequences of violence are often undesirable, leading to disease, malnutrition, starvation, moral decadence (deterioration), poor economic performance of governments, boundary disputes, tribal divisions, the wanton destruction of lives, properties and so on. This paper uses the principles of negative emotion to understand the concept of violence as it occurs in Northern Nigeria. The paper further derives theoretical explanations from the principle that individuals have the power to let peace prevail through a focused consciousness and common structures of intelligibility. The process was based on 10 principles of understanding violence, which were derived from 14 negative emotion indicators or factors of violence in the study setting. Subject matter experts (SME), including security agencies, private security experts, victims of violence and religious leaders, were consulted to determine the interconnectedness between these emotions in trends and patterns of violence. Social network analysis was used as a tool to map the dynamics of emotions, which identified three negative emotions: desperation, frustration and anger. These were ranked in order of their occurrence in conflicts and subsequent violence. The paper also suggests means to reduce violence and conflict by understanding this 'trinity' of violence in the region.
Poverty, particularly in developing countries, is endemic and has attained a crisis stage. It is ... more Poverty, particularly in developing countries, is endemic and has attained a crisis stage. It is compounded by conflicts, corrupt/inefficient governments and other manmade issues that seem to keep people in perpetual deprivation and want. Although serious, this poverty trap is fixable. This paper reports on an ongoing research about poverty reduction strategies. It is based on the proposition that the first step in poverty reduction is understanding what makes an agent trapped. Therefore, this paper conceptualises poverty traps as fractal, self-perpetuating conditions when individuals are caught in a vicious cycle of poverty and continue to suffer from undesirable hardships for a long period of time. Using the neo-classical economic development theory and data obtained from the United Nations Development Programme, this paper argues that current poverty reduction strategies, which have been in use over the last five decades, have been ineffective. From the experiences of one of the authors in poverty reduction over the last two decades, a new poverty reduction strategy that focuses on individuals is thus proposed. This strategy uses the synergetic concept that indicates the simultaneous causation of poverty through the interaction between the individual and the context. This paper demonstrates that individuals in poverty are caught between externalisation and internalisation of conditions that are nonetheless transient and removable. Based on this new understanding, a four-stage interactive model called Learn, Relate and Adapt (LERA) is proposed for use in poverty research and the poverty reduction implementation strategy.
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