Research in Social Sciences

Employment Dynamics and Job Loss among Households in Nigeria: Pre COVID-19 and COVID-19 Periods

Yetunde OM Oladokun, Olubunmi O Alawode — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This paper examined employment dynamics and job loss among households in Nigeria at pre Covid-19 and Covid-19 Periods. The Nigeria Covid-19 National Longitudinal Phone Survey (NLPS) was the secondary data used. And analysed using frequency counts, cross tabs and bar charts. At pre Covid-19 period, most households (27.2%) were employed in commerce sector, agricultural sector (23.8%), and personal services, education & health (22.3%). However, during Covid-19 period, almost half (48.7%) of the households, were engaged in agriculture sector and commerce sector (18.3%). During Covid-19, 35.3% of jobs were lost by Nigerian households. Agriculture engaged 200 households at pre Covid-19 period, and rose to 413 during Covid-19, leading to +51.6% change, implying its capability to absorb sudden shocks in households’ employment. Policies to enhance greater participation of households within agriculture sector will help to reduce shock. Federal Government of Nigeria should effectively execute Nigerian Economic Sustainability Plan to achieve employment generation.

Teachers’ Attitude and Metacognitive Awareness as Determinants of their Perceived Professional Competence in Social Studies

Emmanuel E Achor, Alhassan A Yusufu, Emmanuel Joseph — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The study was an investigation of teachers’ attitude and metacognitive awareness as determinants of their Perceived Professional Competence in Social Studies among post primary schools in Kogi, Nigeria. The study adopted correlational survey research design. The population comprised 3,957 Upper Basic Social Studies teachers from 1937 Universal Basic Education schools in Kogi East for 2019/2020 academic session with a sample of 980. The three instruments used are Social Studies Teachers’ Competency Scale (SSTCS), Social Studies Teachers’ Attitudinal Disposition (SSTAD) and Teachers’ Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (TMAI) with reliability coefficients of 0.88, 0.76 and 0.75 respectively. From the analysis it was found that teachers’ attitude towards Social Studies F(1,469) = 1.158; p = 0.000 < 0.05 and teachers’ metacognitive awareness F(1,469) = 15.638; p = 0.000 < 0.05 have significant contributions to their Perceived Professional Competence in public secondary schools. It was also found that teachers’ attitude towards Social Studies F(1,507) = 0.920; p = 0.038 < 0.05 and metacognitive awareness F(1,507) = 1.487; p = 0.023 < 0.05 had significant contributions to their Perceived Professional Competence in private secondary schools. Social Studies teachers’ metacognitive awareness and attitude towards Social Studies jointly also contributed significantly to their Perceived Professional Competence in public secondary schools F(2,468) = 8.234; p = 0.000 < 0.05 as well as in private secondary schools F(2,506) = 1.087; p = 0.038 < 0.05. It was recommended among others that the State Ministry of Education should employ only teachers that are professionally qualified and certified to teach Social Studies.

Capital Market Volatility and Real Sector Expansion in Nigeria

Alex Oisaozoje Iriabije, Ubong Edem Effiong, Nora Francis Inyang — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This study utilized data from the first quarter of 2010 to the fourth quarter of 2021 to explore how volatility in the capital market can influence the real sector of the Nigerian economy. With the use of the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) approach, we realized that there is no volatility clustering in the Nigerian market capitalization given that the estimate of lagged value of residual is negative and significant. Also, the decay of the response function on a quarterly basis being 0.3054 is quite low and is symptomatic of response functions to shock dying at a faster pace. Therefore, a new shock in the Nigerian capital market it will have impact on the market capitalization for a short period making the market less predictable. This makes the Nigerian capital market to be efficient since the market is not easily predictable. The VAR result revealed that the market capitalization put forth a positive and significant influence on economic growth; with the impulse response function indicating that economic growth responded positively to shocks in market capitalization. The paper concludes that the capital market needs be streamlined in order to avoid volatility clustering in the future, in order to maintain the efficiency of the market.