Effects of Maritime Illegal Oil Trading on Economic Growth in Nigeria
Purpose: Illegal oil trading involves the theft of crude oil and its derivative products through a variety of different mechanisms with significant economic implications. This study therefore, investigates these implications covering the period of 1995-2012. Methodology: Employing the e-views econometric software, the unit root, co-integration, and granger causality tests were carried out on the secondary data set to make it amenable to the application of the vector autoregressive (VAR) modeling of the ordinary least square multiple regression to reveal among others, that a significant relationship exists between the illegal oil trading and the economic growth in Nigeria. Findings: Other findings are that the volume of oil theft as an explanatory variable met the a priori expectation with its negative coefficient, but together with the one-year lagged variables of the dependent variables, was statistically significant in terms of contributions to the dependent variable. The study concludes that illegal oil trading has negative effects on the Nigerian economy, especially within the study period and should be checked by the law enforcement authorities. Recommendations: Prominent among the recommendations is the need to institute adequate and effective sanctions against offenders to serve as a deterrent.
Survival at the margins: Economic crisis and coping mechanisms in Rural Nigeria
This paper examines the diverse strategies being adopted by rural dwellers to cope with the worsening economic crisis in Nigeria, in which they absorb a disproportionate burden as the most marginalized social category. While it draws from secondary materials, it nevertheless relies on the personal observations and experiences of the author's long contact with rural communities across the country. This contact, spanning over a decade, was also complemented with interviews and focus group discussions with rural dwellers. The findings reveal that rural dwellers in Nigeria—irrespective of geographical location and creed—are united by the poverty precipitated by the lingering and excruciating economic crisis that has enveloped the country since the 1980s. The paper concludes on the note that while the various strategies evolved by the people to actualize their survival may seem a creative response, given how they have enhanced their organizational dynamics and self-reliance, they are nevertheless mere survival mechanisms, not a long-term substitute for the development of a sound, healthy and robust economy that can effectively respond to the much-talked-about national rebirth.
Dissipation Loss Effects in Isolated and Coupled Transmission Lines
This paper describes a computer-aided analysis of dissipation losses in uniform isolated or coupled transmission lines for microwave and millimeter-wave integrated-circuit applications. The analysis employs a quasi-TEM model for isolated transmission lines and for the even- and odd-mode transmission lines associated with coupled-line structures. The conductor and dielectric losses are then related to equivalent charge density distributions, which are evaluated using a method-of-moments solution. The transmission lines treated by this analysis may contain any number of Iossy conductors and inhomogeneous dielectrics, consisting of any number of different homogeneous dielectric regions. A development is provided to explicitly relate the four-port terminal-electrical performance of directional couplers to evaluated even- and odd- mode loss coefficients. Examples of evaluated losses are presented in graphical form for isolated lines of inverted microstrip and trapped inverted microstrip and edge-coupled microstrip with a dielectric overlay. The analysis accuracy has been confirmed using microstrip and coplanar waveguide configurations. A comparison is made of the total loss characteristics for microstrip, coplanar waveguide, inverted microstrip, and trapped inverted microstrip. Calculations are compared with measurements for the coupled-line structure. Accuracy of the solution and suggested refinements are discussed. Five computer programs are documented.