The Ijebu people are famous for celebrating the annual Ojude-Oba festival, with the precept of paying homage to the Monarch for over a century. The different age groups compete in a sustainable dress designed in traditional styles called aso-egbe. The festival attracts an unflinching crowd from home and abroad, featuring fashion parades and cultural shows. The paper documents the dress tradition of the age groups during the Ojude-Oba festival and its potential for tourism development in Ogun State and Nigeria at large. It revealed that the continued execution of this event has brought about tremendous development to Ijebu-Ode in trade, technology, commerce and industry as well as building a strong jingoistic spirit among the Ijebu populace. The dress-group model displayed during the event promotes culture and fashion sense. Designed from eco-friendly local materials it also reflects the class and opulence of individual groups. It communicates status, age, prestige, beauty and aesthetics. The study recommends the sustenance and promotion of traditional dress. The government should give deserved attention to events with a strong potential of attracting inbound tourists to enhance economic growth and development among Nigerians.

Vaccines approved for routine childhood immunization are safe and effective but sometimes there are Adverse Events Following Immunization (AEFI) which often result in ill health, various forms of deformities when it is wrongly administered and eventually forfeiture of public trust in immunization programmes. This study examined Nursing Mothers: Adverse Events Following Immunization and its Implication for Counselling. A multistage sampling procedure was used to choose 300 nursing mothers. Data were collected with the aid of a questionnaire and analyzed using means, frequency counts, percentages, Chi-square, and Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC). Results revealed that the mean age of the respondents was 30 years. Pain or swelling at the injection site (85.7%) was the major existing AEFI. The majority (80.7%) of the respondents were highly knowledgeable about AEFI, while 74.0% had a negative attitude to the incidence of AEFI. The majority (68.7%) had unfavourable perception on the continuation of immunization for their children after an AEFI. The major counselling services available for nursing mothers were adherence to immunization schedules as advised by health counsellors (Mean= 2.67) and pre-counselling for nursing mothers on AEFI before child immunization (Mean =2.63). Correlation results showed that order of birth (r= 0.12), counselling services (r =0.15); awareness of nursing mothers on immunization (r=0.29) had significant relationships (p<0.05) with knowledge of nursing mothers on the AEFI. Also, respondents had high knowledge, negative attitude, and unfavorable perception to the incidence and continuation of immunization for Children after AEFI. In conclusion, order of birth, counselling services, and awareness of nursing mothers on immunization are crucial in shaping nursing mothers’ knowledge on the AEFI. Hence, it was recommended that the Ministry of Health both should facilitate frequent counselling and immunization refresher courses for health counsellors on vaccine safety and how to control AEFI among nursing mothers.

socio-economic characteristics of respondents were described using frequency counts and percentages. Inferential statistics such as chi-square was used to test the hypotheses. Geographic Information System (GIS) software (ArcView 9.3) was used to map locations and analyse distances and multiple buffers were developed around input centers to determine farmers' accessibility. Results from the study show that inputs like fertilizer (65%), agro-chemicals (94.38%), and planting materials like seeds and stems (90.63%) were majorly procured from private input centers. Majority (74.37%) of the farmers interviewed travel more than 15 km to procure input from government established input centers. Chi-square results showed significant relationship between sex (χ2=29.51, P=0.05), marital status (χ2=10.97, P=0.00), income (χ2=32.55, P=0.00) and farm size (χ2=14.73, P=0.00). Improvement in agricultural output will depend to some extent on farmers’ access to agro-input centers. The government should establish agro-input input centers closer to farmers and make inputs available at subsidized rates; this will make them affordable to farmers and increase agricultural production.

Youths living in rural communities have limited access to internet resources. Majority who have access to it have used it for limited purposes. The study investigated pattern of internet use among youths in the study area. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 245 youths for the study. Questionnaire was used for data collection. Data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Result showed more males used internet more than female (i.e 73.5% and 26.5%) respectively. Many of them (86.4%) were within ages 18-22, above average were Christians (69.4%) while the remaining were Muslims respectively. Their variations in their use of mobile platforms and applications are as follows: 82.9% used 2go, 42.4% used facebook, 54.3% used SMS, while 8.2% used it for online transactions like purchase of products. Ranking their frequent usage, 2go ranked highest followed by SMS among others. It was found there existed a significant association between respondents’ age and pattern of internet use. It was established that youths in the communities used the internet for various purposes ranging from social to economic and religious purposes.

Background: Maternal nutritional knowledge can play a critical role in the improvement of nutritional status of childrenObjective: This study assessed the nutrition knowledge of mothers and nutritional status of underfive children in selected rural communities of Ogun-State, Nigeria.Methods: Multistage sampling technique was used in selecting the respondents (n=232). A structured questionnaire was used to collect information on socio-economic and demographic characteristics, nutrition knowledge of mothers and anthropometry of the under-five children. Nutritional knowledge was assessed using a 20 - point scale standardized general nutritional knowledge questionnaire, while nutritional status of children was evaluated using WHO growth standard of 2006.Results: About 20.7% of the mothers had high nutritional knowledge, 35.8% had moderate nutritional knowledge while 43.5% had low nutritional knowledge. Furthermore, 98% of the mothers have knowledge that children less than six month would grow better on breast milk alone yet 83% and 93.5% gave water to quench thirst and herbal tea to aid recovery from illness, respectively indicating a gap between knowledge and practice. Anthropometric assessment indicated that 14.2% of the children had moderate to severe wasting, 33.6% were stunted while 17% of the children were underweight. Among the socio-economic characteristics of parents, education and income had significant (p<0.05) relationship with wasting among the children while parents' occupation, education and income had a significant (p<0.05) relationship with underweight and mid upper arm circumference (MUAC).Conclusion: There is need to create opportunities for maternal income generation, enhanced occupation and education in order to improve the nutritional status of the children.Keywords: Under-five children, Nutrition Status, Maternal Nutrition Knowledge

The study explored the operations, (savings and loan procurement), as well as the problems and prospects of the informal financial institutions in ATISBO Local Government Area of Oyo State, Southwest Nigeria. The sampling technique used was Stratified Random Sampling to select threevillages from the area and Systematic Random Sampling of respondents was conducted to select 120 respondents. With a mean age of 41.4 years, most of the respondents’ ages fell between 40 and 60 years. Some of the respondents (16.7%) had no formal education though they were managingfairly large household sizes, with a mean of 10 members/ household). 72.5% have no formal education, though the vast farming experience of the respondents; (mean 21.5 years) has been a facilitating factor in productivity improvement in the locality. Savings mobilized per year rangedfrom N 96,000 to N115, 000.00 with a mean saving of N 72,840.00. The results showed that the age, years of residency in the locality, education of the farmers, farm size and gender, all have significant relationships at 5 % with the volume of loan procured by the respondents. R2 value and adjusted R2 were 67% and 64%, F values were calculated as 13.2 respectively. The Linear function was selected as the equation of best fit. From the estimated linear lead equation, F-value was significant at 1% level of confidence, implying that the variables all have collective impact on the volume of savings mobilized from the informal sources by the respondents, hence the goodness of fit of the selected function. Some of the problems discovered on the operation of the informal services were short term expectation on loans repayment, inhibiting attitudes of group members, unsynchronized contributions to savings due to non-aligned cash flow in farming, elusive attitudes of money collectors and group coordinators and simultaneous requests by members for funds (loans), due to specific timing in farm operations and domestic requirements. The prospects of the informal financial services and groups in Nigeria could be improved if relevant policies are formulated and geared towards support for agricultural sectors and increase in the net farm income of farmers in such a way that the marginal propensity to save and invest more on farming could increase. The need to implement policies to ensure sustainable integration of the indigenous savings institutions into the operations of the Community Banks through the mobile rural banking strategies was suggested. Intensive use of extension services to facilitate adult literacy and learning among rural dwellers; especially farmers, to reduce illiteracy and empower farmers for savings, investment on agriculture as well as improved livelihood were also suggested.Key words: Informal Credit Operation, Savings, ATISBO L.G.A, farmers, Oyo State.