In Nigeria, the high dependence on fossil fuels for energy generation and utilization in various ... more In Nigeria, the high dependence on fossil fuels for energy generation and utilization in various sectors of the economy has resulted in the emission of a large quantity of carbon dioxide (CO2), which is one of the criteria gaseous pollutants that is frequently encountered in the environment. The high quantity of CO2 has adverse implications on human health and serious damaging effects on the environment. In this study, multi-decade (1971–2014) CO2-emissions data for Nigeria were obtained from the World Development Indicator (WDI). The data were disaggregated into various emission sources: gaseous fuel consumption (GFC), liquid fuel consumption (LFC), solid fuel consumption (SFC), transport (TRA), electricity and heat production (EHP), residential buildings and commercial and public services (RSCPS), manufacturing industries and construction (MINC), and other sectors excluding residential buildings and commercial and public services (OSEC). The analysis was conducted for a sectorial ...
Bridging the Gap: Empowering and Educating Today’s Learners in Statistics. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Teaching Statistics
The Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards (BMAS; National Universities Commission, 2014) is a gaug... more The Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards (BMAS; National Universities Commission, 2014) is a gauge for the quality of academic programmes taught in Nigerian universities. This study analyzed published administrative data and survey data that covered personnel, physical facilities, equipment, and library and information support systems. Results show that the mix of academic staff in statistics was 20% Professors/Readers, 21% Senior Lecturers, and 59% Lecturers compared with the proposed BMAS mix of 20%, 35%, and 45%, respectively. The survey among 29 universities showed that internet access was available for education support services, and 55% of the universities adopted a 6-month industrial training as stipulated by the regulatory body. There is an urgent need to revise the BMAS and to engage senior personnel with improving the quality of statistical training.
Preventive chemotherapy (PC) is an important tool to address transmission and reduce morbidities ... more Preventive chemotherapy (PC) is an important tool to address transmission and reduce morbidities associated with soil-transmitted helminths (STHs). The aim of the study is to assess the PC implementation programme coverage and relate the same to the endemicity of STH in Nigeria. The secondary data collected by the World Health Organization (WHO) through the expanded special project for elimination of neglected tropical diseases (ESPEN) and made available at the ESPEN portal was used for the study. The PC implementation coverage and frequency of treatment were evaluated and related to STH endemicity levels in Nigeria. STH was actively transmitted in all six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. The southern part of Nigeria was more endemic compared with northern Nigeria. There was no PC intervention in preschoolers and effective PC coverage (19.3%) fell below the WHO ≥ 75% PC coverage index benchmark in school children. The percentages of children that harbour low, moderate, and high STH in...
Aims: One of the ways to manage the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is monit... more Aims: One of the ways to manage the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is monitoring of public knowledge, risk perceptions, adherence to preventive measures and preparedness behaviors. This is of utmost importance in resource limited countries. This study determined the knowledge and perception about COVID-19; adherence to COVID-19 preventive measures; as well as predictors of self-perceived risk of contracting COVID-19 among Nigerian adults.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among Nigerian adults ≥ 18 years using an online survey. Participants were recruited using the authors’ social networks. Data was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics at 5% level of statistical significance.Results: Generally, a high proportion of respondents had correct knowledge about COVID-19. However, only about half (49.8% and 49.9%) had correct knowledge that obesity was a risk factor for COVID-19 and that antibiotics cannot be used to treat COVID-19. Most (8...
Background Malaria has been strongly linked to the transmission and pathophysiology of some viral... more Background Malaria has been strongly linked to the transmission and pathophysiology of some viral diseases. Malaria and vaccine-preventable diseases often co-exist in endemic countries but the implication of their co-existence on their transmission dynamics and control is poorly understood. The study aims to evaluate the relationships between the incidence of malaria and cases of measles and yellow fever in Africa. Methods The malaria incidence, death due to malaria, measles and yellow fever data were sourced from the WHO database. Poisson and zero-inflated time-trend regression were used to model the relationships between malaria and the two vaccine-preventable diseases. P-values <0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results A significant negative relationship existed between malaria incidence and measles cases (P<0.05), however, malaria showed a positive relationship with yellow fever (P<0.05). The relationships between death due to malaria and measles/yellow f...
Journal of Applied Sciences and Environmental Management
A certain degree of solar light illuminance could prevent myopia in children. However, UV radiati... more A certain degree of solar light illuminance could prevent myopia in children. However, UV radiation (UVR) serves as mutagen and a non-specific damaging agent. Ultraviolet radiation can initiates and promote tumor growth, essentially under the skin. To this end, this study was designed to assess daily and annual UVR exposures of outdoor workers (OWs) in Southwestern Nigeria by using standard methods. Results obtained show that the mean daily and annual UV exposure were found to be 1.23 mW/cm2 and 319.8 mW/cm2 respectively. The mean predictive protection factor (PPF) for glass, trampoline and neem shade were found to be 43.84%, 98.69 % and 92.88 % respectively. This indicates that trampoline used to build tent has the greatest PPF followed by the shade of a neem tree. Results of this study also show that peak UVR exposures occur between 1400 and 1600 hours. Based on the findings of this study, outdoor workers could prevent UVR overexposure during the peak exposure period by working un...
Although the assessment of teachers by students has been introduced into tertiary educational dev... more Although the assessment of teachers by students has been introduced into tertiary educational development in Nigeria, very limited information exists on students’ expectations of their teachers. We investigated this component among a cohort of newly admitted students at the University of Medical Sciences in Ondo State, South-West Nigeria. This was a descriptive quantitative study consisting of a community-interactive session with students at the 100 and 200 levels of the University. Three hundred (300) students participated in the session. We first explained the purpose of the study. Thereafter, the students individually completed a semi-structured questionnaire that elicited information on their views on the qualities they expected of their lecturers. The results were analyzed quantitatively with SPSS version 21. Of the 300 students, 204 (64.0%) completed the questionnaire. Friendliness and congeniality (46.1%), good classroom management (38.7%), good sense of humor (36.3%), good communication skills (33.3%) and expertise (32.8%) were the five most desirable qualities of good lecturers listed by the students. By contrast, the five qualities which rated lowest in the assessment were equity (4.4%), mentoring capacity (4.9%), enthusiasm (6.9%), encouraging students to succeed (7.8%) and approachability (8.3%). We conclude that students at the University of Medical Sciences look out for personal social relationships with their teachers during curricular delivery. We recommend that approaches to address these concerns should be incorporated into the design of training programs for teachers and in protocols for students’ evaluation of teachers in this university and others in similar circumstances.
In Nigeria, the high dependence on fossil fuels for energy generation and utilization in various ... more In Nigeria, the high dependence on fossil fuels for energy generation and utilization in various sectors of the economy has resulted in the emission of a large quantity of carbon dioxide (CO2), which is one of the criteria gaseous pollutants that is frequently encountered in the environment. The high quantity of CO2 has adverse implications on human health and serious damaging effects on the environment. In this study, multi-decade (1971–2014) CO2-emissions data for Nigeria were obtained from the World Development Indicator (WDI). The data were disaggregated into various emission sources: gaseous fuel consumption (GFC), liquid fuel consumption (LFC), solid fuel consumption (SFC), transport (TRA), electricity and heat production (EHP), residential buildings and commercial and public services (RSCPS), manufacturing industries and construction (MINC), and other sectors excluding residential buildings and commercial and public services (OSEC). The analysis was conducted for a sectorial ...
T he Causal relationship between financial development and economic growth has received divergent... more T he Causal relationship between financial development and economic growth has received divergent views in the literature under the traditional Granger approach to causality using data from various countries. The more recent Toda and Yamamoto and Dolado and Lutkepohl (TYDL) approach to causality were used to investigate the causal relationship between financial development and economic growth in Nigeria for the period 1985 to 2015. TYDL is based on an augmented VAR modeling and it is adjudged more robust to order of integration of the variables when compared with Granger framework. The maximum order of integration was two while the optimal lag length of three was selected by FPE, AIC and HQ criteria. Bi-directional causality was found between financial markets indicators and economic growth while unilateral causality running from stock market indicators to GDP was established. The findings support existing studies that agree with the fact that a well-structured financial sector bree...
In this study, we propose a robust approach to handling geo-referenced data and discuss its stati... more In this study, we propose a robust approach to handling geo-referenced data and discuss its statistical analysis. The linear regression model has been found inappropriate in this type of study. This motivates us to redefine its error structure to incorporate the spatial components inherent in the data into the model. Therefore, four spatial models emanated from the re-definition of the error structure. We fitted the spatial and the non-spatial linear model to the precipitation data and compared their results. All the spatial models outperformed the non-spatial model. The Spatial Autoregressive with additional autoregressive error structure (SARAR) model is the most adequate among the spatial models. Furthermore, we identified the hot and cold spot locations of precipitation and their spatial distribution in the study area.
OBJECTIVES To evaluate malaria transmission in relation to insecticide-treated net (ITN) coverage... more OBJECTIVES To evaluate malaria transmission in relation to insecticide-treated net (ITN) coverage in Nigeria. METHODS We used an exploratory analysis approach to evaluate variation in malaria transmission in relation to ITN distribution in 1,325 Demographic and Health Survey clusters in Nigeria. A Bayesian spatial generalized linear mixed model with a Leroux conditional autoregressive prior for the random effects was used to model the spatial and contextual variation in malaria prevalence and ITN distribution after adjusting for environmental variables. RESULTS Spatial smoothed maps showed the nationwide distribution of malaria and ITN. The distribution of ITN varied significantly across the 6 geopolitical zones (p<0.05). The North-East had the least ITN distribution (0.196±0.071), while ITN distribution was highest in the South-South (0.309±0.075). ITN coverage was also higher in rural areas (0.281±0.074) than in urban areas (0.240±0.096, p<0.05). The Bayesian hierarchical re...
Regression models commonly used to analyze cross-section and panel data assume that observations/... more Regression models commonly used to analyze cross-section and panel data assume that observations/regions are independent of one another. Relaxing this assumption of independent observations in a cross sectional setting requires that we provide a parsimonious way to specify structure for the dependence between the n observational units that make up our size n data sample. Spatial econometrics techniques allow us to account for dependence between observations which often arise when observations are collected from points or regions located in space. In this application, Monte Carlo experiment was designed using R codes to assess the performance of spatial and non spatial model. Spatial autoregressive (SAR) model was used as a typical spatial model and ordinary least squares (OLS) as non spatial model. The study showed that OLS estimate of SAR model is bias and inconsistent. Also, it is found that bias emanating from omitting spatial effect is a function of degree of spatial autocorrela...
In Nigeria, the high dependence on fossil fuels for energy generation and utilization in various ... more In Nigeria, the high dependence on fossil fuels for energy generation and utilization in various sectors of the economy has resulted in the emission of a large quantity of carbon dioxide (CO2), which is one of the criteria gaseous pollutants that is frequently encountered in the environment. The high quantity of CO2 has adverse implications on human health and serious damaging effects on the environment. In this study, multi-decade (1971–2014) CO2-emissions data for Nigeria were obtained from the World Development Indicator (WDI). The data were disaggregated into various emission sources: gaseous fuel consumption (GFC), liquid fuel consumption (LFC), solid fuel consumption (SFC), transport (TRA), electricity and heat production (EHP), residential buildings and commercial and public services (RSCPS), manufacturing industries and construction (MINC), and other sectors excluding residential buildings and commercial and public services (OSEC). The analysis was conducted for a sectorial ...
Bridging the Gap: Empowering and Educating Today’s Learners in Statistics. Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Teaching Statistics
The Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards (BMAS; National Universities Commission, 2014) is a gaug... more The Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards (BMAS; National Universities Commission, 2014) is a gauge for the quality of academic programmes taught in Nigerian universities. This study analyzed published administrative data and survey data that covered personnel, physical facilities, equipment, and library and information support systems. Results show that the mix of academic staff in statistics was 20% Professors/Readers, 21% Senior Lecturers, and 59% Lecturers compared with the proposed BMAS mix of 20%, 35%, and 45%, respectively. The survey among 29 universities showed that internet access was available for education support services, and 55% of the universities adopted a 6-month industrial training as stipulated by the regulatory body. There is an urgent need to revise the BMAS and to engage senior personnel with improving the quality of statistical training.
Preventive chemotherapy (PC) is an important tool to address transmission and reduce morbidities ... more Preventive chemotherapy (PC) is an important tool to address transmission and reduce morbidities associated with soil-transmitted helminths (STHs). The aim of the study is to assess the PC implementation programme coverage and relate the same to the endemicity of STH in Nigeria. The secondary data collected by the World Health Organization (WHO) through the expanded special project for elimination of neglected tropical diseases (ESPEN) and made available at the ESPEN portal was used for the study. The PC implementation coverage and frequency of treatment were evaluated and related to STH endemicity levels in Nigeria. STH was actively transmitted in all six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. The southern part of Nigeria was more endemic compared with northern Nigeria. There was no PC intervention in preschoolers and effective PC coverage (19.3%) fell below the WHO ≥ 75% PC coverage index benchmark in school children. The percentages of children that harbour low, moderate, and high STH in...
Aims: One of the ways to manage the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is monit... more Aims: One of the ways to manage the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is monitoring of public knowledge, risk perceptions, adherence to preventive measures and preparedness behaviors. This is of utmost importance in resource limited countries. This study determined the knowledge and perception about COVID-19; adherence to COVID-19 preventive measures; as well as predictors of self-perceived risk of contracting COVID-19 among Nigerian adults.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among Nigerian adults ≥ 18 years using an online survey. Participants were recruited using the authors’ social networks. Data was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics at 5% level of statistical significance.Results: Generally, a high proportion of respondents had correct knowledge about COVID-19. However, only about half (49.8% and 49.9%) had correct knowledge that obesity was a risk factor for COVID-19 and that antibiotics cannot be used to treat COVID-19. Most (8...
Background Malaria has been strongly linked to the transmission and pathophysiology of some viral... more Background Malaria has been strongly linked to the transmission and pathophysiology of some viral diseases. Malaria and vaccine-preventable diseases often co-exist in endemic countries but the implication of their co-existence on their transmission dynamics and control is poorly understood. The study aims to evaluate the relationships between the incidence of malaria and cases of measles and yellow fever in Africa. Methods The malaria incidence, death due to malaria, measles and yellow fever data were sourced from the WHO database. Poisson and zero-inflated time-trend regression were used to model the relationships between malaria and the two vaccine-preventable diseases. P-values <0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results A significant negative relationship existed between malaria incidence and measles cases (P<0.05), however, malaria showed a positive relationship with yellow fever (P<0.05). The relationships between death due to malaria and measles/yellow f...
Journal of Applied Sciences and Environmental Management
A certain degree of solar light illuminance could prevent myopia in children. However, UV radiati... more A certain degree of solar light illuminance could prevent myopia in children. However, UV radiation (UVR) serves as mutagen and a non-specific damaging agent. Ultraviolet radiation can initiates and promote tumor growth, essentially under the skin. To this end, this study was designed to assess daily and annual UVR exposures of outdoor workers (OWs) in Southwestern Nigeria by using standard methods. Results obtained show that the mean daily and annual UV exposure were found to be 1.23 mW/cm2 and 319.8 mW/cm2 respectively. The mean predictive protection factor (PPF) for glass, trampoline and neem shade were found to be 43.84%, 98.69 % and 92.88 % respectively. This indicates that trampoline used to build tent has the greatest PPF followed by the shade of a neem tree. Results of this study also show that peak UVR exposures occur between 1400 and 1600 hours. Based on the findings of this study, outdoor workers could prevent UVR overexposure during the peak exposure period by working un...
Although the assessment of teachers by students has been introduced into tertiary educational dev... more Although the assessment of teachers by students has been introduced into tertiary educational development in Nigeria, very limited information exists on students’ expectations of their teachers. We investigated this component among a cohort of newly admitted students at the University of Medical Sciences in Ondo State, South-West Nigeria. This was a descriptive quantitative study consisting of a community-interactive session with students at the 100 and 200 levels of the University. Three hundred (300) students participated in the session. We first explained the purpose of the study. Thereafter, the students individually completed a semi-structured questionnaire that elicited information on their views on the qualities they expected of their lecturers. The results were analyzed quantitatively with SPSS version 21. Of the 300 students, 204 (64.0%) completed the questionnaire. Friendliness and congeniality (46.1%), good classroom management (38.7%), good sense of humor (36.3%), good communication skills (33.3%) and expertise (32.8%) were the five most desirable qualities of good lecturers listed by the students. By contrast, the five qualities which rated lowest in the assessment were equity (4.4%), mentoring capacity (4.9%), enthusiasm (6.9%), encouraging students to succeed (7.8%) and approachability (8.3%). We conclude that students at the University of Medical Sciences look out for personal social relationships with their teachers during curricular delivery. We recommend that approaches to address these concerns should be incorporated into the design of training programs for teachers and in protocols for students’ evaluation of teachers in this university and others in similar circumstances.
In Nigeria, the high dependence on fossil fuels for energy generation and utilization in various ... more In Nigeria, the high dependence on fossil fuels for energy generation and utilization in various sectors of the economy has resulted in the emission of a large quantity of carbon dioxide (CO2), which is one of the criteria gaseous pollutants that is frequently encountered in the environment. The high quantity of CO2 has adverse implications on human health and serious damaging effects on the environment. In this study, multi-decade (1971–2014) CO2-emissions data for Nigeria were obtained from the World Development Indicator (WDI). The data were disaggregated into various emission sources: gaseous fuel consumption (GFC), liquid fuel consumption (LFC), solid fuel consumption (SFC), transport (TRA), electricity and heat production (EHP), residential buildings and commercial and public services (RSCPS), manufacturing industries and construction (MINC), and other sectors excluding residential buildings and commercial and public services (OSEC). The analysis was conducted for a sectorial ...
T he Causal relationship between financial development and economic growth has received divergent... more T he Causal relationship between financial development and economic growth has received divergent views in the literature under the traditional Granger approach to causality using data from various countries. The more recent Toda and Yamamoto and Dolado and Lutkepohl (TYDL) approach to causality were used to investigate the causal relationship between financial development and economic growth in Nigeria for the period 1985 to 2015. TYDL is based on an augmented VAR modeling and it is adjudged more robust to order of integration of the variables when compared with Granger framework. The maximum order of integration was two while the optimal lag length of three was selected by FPE, AIC and HQ criteria. Bi-directional causality was found between financial markets indicators and economic growth while unilateral causality running from stock market indicators to GDP was established. The findings support existing studies that agree with the fact that a well-structured financial sector bree...
In this study, we propose a robust approach to handling geo-referenced data and discuss its stati... more In this study, we propose a robust approach to handling geo-referenced data and discuss its statistical analysis. The linear regression model has been found inappropriate in this type of study. This motivates us to redefine its error structure to incorporate the spatial components inherent in the data into the model. Therefore, four spatial models emanated from the re-definition of the error structure. We fitted the spatial and the non-spatial linear model to the precipitation data and compared their results. All the spatial models outperformed the non-spatial model. The Spatial Autoregressive with additional autoregressive error structure (SARAR) model is the most adequate among the spatial models. Furthermore, we identified the hot and cold spot locations of precipitation and their spatial distribution in the study area.
OBJECTIVES To evaluate malaria transmission in relation to insecticide-treated net (ITN) coverage... more OBJECTIVES To evaluate malaria transmission in relation to insecticide-treated net (ITN) coverage in Nigeria. METHODS We used an exploratory analysis approach to evaluate variation in malaria transmission in relation to ITN distribution in 1,325 Demographic and Health Survey clusters in Nigeria. A Bayesian spatial generalized linear mixed model with a Leroux conditional autoregressive prior for the random effects was used to model the spatial and contextual variation in malaria prevalence and ITN distribution after adjusting for environmental variables. RESULTS Spatial smoothed maps showed the nationwide distribution of malaria and ITN. The distribution of ITN varied significantly across the 6 geopolitical zones (p<0.05). The North-East had the least ITN distribution (0.196±0.071), while ITN distribution was highest in the South-South (0.309±0.075). ITN coverage was also higher in rural areas (0.281±0.074) than in urban areas (0.240±0.096, p<0.05). The Bayesian hierarchical re...
Regression models commonly used to analyze cross-section and panel data assume that observations/... more Regression models commonly used to analyze cross-section and panel data assume that observations/regions are independent of one another. Relaxing this assumption of independent observations in a cross sectional setting requires that we provide a parsimonious way to specify structure for the dependence between the n observational units that make up our size n data sample. Spatial econometrics techniques allow us to account for dependence between observations which often arise when observations are collected from points or regions located in space. In this application, Monte Carlo experiment was designed using R codes to assess the performance of spatial and non spatial model. Spatial autoregressive (SAR) model was used as a typical spatial model and ordinary least squares (OLS) as non spatial model. The study showed that OLS estimate of SAR model is bias and inconsistent. Also, it is found that bias emanating from omitting spatial effect is a function of degree of spatial autocorrela...
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