The new coronavirus infection, being a current global fearful pandemic disease among humans, has spread all over hundreds of countries around the world and has greatly infected millions of people. While the spread of this disease continues among humans, the study aims at determining which part of Nigeria is more affected by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), as this would assist the national government and other international nongovernmental agencies to plan on the concentration patterns as to which region would require more helping hands in terms of fight against the pandemic disease. Nigeria is stratified into two: southern and northern regions. Data on confirmed cases are sourced from the official website of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control. These datasets, which cover the periods of February 29 and May 1, 2020 inclusive, are captured on a weekly basis and are grouped according to regional zones, i.e., southern and northern parts. The assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variances are tested via the use of Shapiro-Wilk and Bartlett's statistics. The two tests reveal no violation of any of the assumptions. Thereafter, the t-test is applied with a view to determine the region with a higher chance of being affected by COVID-19. Our results indicate that states in the south have a higher rate of confirmed cases of the pandemic infection than the states in the north. It is therefore concluded that the national government as well as other nongovernmental agencies should focus more on the fight against the pandemic disease in the southern states of Nigeria than in the northern states.

Controlling religious gathering during the time of rapid spread of COVID-19 pandemic becomes a serious problem faced by governments at all levels. In fact, all other areas of human endeavor where large gatherings could take place in Nigeria such as club houses, beer parlors, ceremonial gatherings, schools and institutions, market places including kiosks and shops, airports and motor parks, commercial and other money-deposit banks, private and public offices, etcetera were kept under perfect control by government except the religious centers. The global trend of COVID-19 pandemic has become more worrisome as the incidence keeps increasing every day. Curtailing its spread among the human race should be a responsibility to be performed by every individual not only in Nigeria but also in the whole world. However, the influence of religious organizations can never be overlooked in dealing with societal attitude towards curtailing the outbreak of the pandemic. Therefore, the data used for this study were sourced via an online survey designed from Google account with a link. Having expunged incomplete information from the responses received, two thousand, three hundred and sixty useful ones were analyzed using R software. Descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentages and graphics were employed alongside chi-squared test as statistical tools. Empirically, results reveal that it’s the responsibility of everyone to encourage curtailing the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. Also, it’s established that religious followers do not fear the pandemic; they only obeyed government’s lock-down directive. Though majority of the citizens (84%) consider this policy as punishment, people prefer worshipping their God (gods) at home, if possible from home while engaging with their daily commercial activities. Hence, the study also reveals that most of the religious teachings during the pandemic were meant to publicly sensitize citizens about how dangerous COVID-19 is. This was supported by approximately 73% of the respondents. We therefore recommend that representatives of religious leaders and organizations should be involved during policy formulation, especially health-related policies as evidenced from the study.

This paper, which is based on budgetary provisions in Ejigbo Local Government Area of the State of Osun for a period of three years spanning 2011 to 2013, considered allocation of limited resources on expenditure items from which it was discovered that capital expenditure should be given maximum attention during the preparation of budget. Having applied Revised Simplex Method (RSM) on the formulated Linear Programming Problem (LPP), the results revealed that less emphasis should be placed on recurrent expenditure as well as consolidated revenue fund charges with a view to ensuring optimal budgetary allocation by meeting the demands of the citizenry in the local government area considered.

This paper investigated the most profitable source(s) of profit maximization in commercial banks in Nigeria as a result of the available records from CBN. The data sets were based on the post-merger monthly income and expenditure of all the twenty-one licensed commercial banks in Nigeria for a period of eight years, equivalently ninety-six months. Commercial banks’ sources of income were classified into five categories: interests on loans and advances, commission on turnover, electronic banking charges, commission on sales of third party institutions such as sales of institution forms, and finally income from other investments such as commission on treasury bills, money market instruments, capital projects financing and so on; all these are considered as exogenous variables for which commercial banks’ expenditure is classified as endogenous variable. A number of assumptions underlying the use of econometric approach for modelling were confirmed using appropriate techniques. It was discovered that interests on loans and advances give the most profitable source of income while commission on sales of third party institutions happened to be the least means of profit. After proper variable scrutiny by stepwise selection procedure, a reliable econometric model was obtained for forecasting. The conclusions reached on this study resulted to a piece of very strong advice such that commercial banks should intensify efforts by all means to convince and encourage more customers on financial borrowings and, also increase the risks of financing capital projects with a view to maximizing profits in banking sector.

This study compares results obtained from the application of Classical Least Squares with that obtained from the two major biased estimation methods: Ridge and Principal Component Regressions in multicollinear situations using gynecological data from University College Hospital, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria.Numerical values of baby's weights (less than 2.5kg) at birth were considered as response variable while mother's age, weight and height, as well as preterm delivery, multiple pregnancies, parity, graphidity, maternal infections such as malaria, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted diseases, anaemia/shortage of blood, intra-uterine infections, congenital abnormalities, etc and fetal infections serve as explanatory variables.Regression method is used as the statistical tool.A number of assumptions of the regression analysis were inspected.Normality assumption was confirmed by plotting Normal Q-Q Plot and Histogram of the Standardized Residuals.The data sets were also inspected for homoscedasticity of error variances using Residual Plot and Fligner-Killeen Test; it was established that homoscedasticity assumption was not violated.Autocorrelation problem on the data set was checked by Durbin-Watson statistic.The test revealed that autocorrelation problem can be tolerated.Existence of multicollinearity problem was further checked in the data set using Farrar-Glauber Chi-squared test.It was established that some predictors are highly correlated; this was also true when correlation matrix table was obtained.Shrinkage estimator of Ridge Regression was obtained by Iterative Method of Hoerl and Kennard.Ridge Regression coefficients were later computed.Kaiser's and Cattell's Screen Criteria were employed for determining number of principal components to be retained in the analysis.The two criteria suggested that the first three components should be retained but only one component is significant.Thereafter, Ridge Regression was finally recommended as the best method to handle multicollinearity problem under Frequentist Approach.

This paper, which is based on the experiment conducted by Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, State Government of Osun within 2012 planting season, investigates the best variety of cowpea in each of the three senatorial zones of Osun State with a view to recommending variety of cowpea that will produce optimum yields.Four common varieties of cowpea: IAR341, IT8D994, IAR1696 and LOCAL were considered in the experiment with one farmland each selected from individual zone as block.Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with the assumption of random effect model was used in collecting the data sets on grain yields of cowpea varieties.Observations were taken from Iwo, Ila and Esa-Oke Farmlands representing Osun West, Osun Central and Osun East Senatorial Zones.Bartlett's statistic was used to test for the validity of homogeneity of error variances for the data sets obtained from each zone.The test revealed that the assumption of equality of error variances was not violated.Shapiro-Wilk test was employed to check for validity of normality assumption on the data sets in each zone and, it was confirmed that departure from normality was not established.While the two assumptions were valid, ANOVA was conducted on the data sets and it was concluded that the mean grain yields of cowpea varieties are significantly different in the three zones.Duncan Multiple Range Test (DMRT) was employed to perform pair-wise comparisons of the varieties of cowpea.Box Plots were drawn for cowpeas varieties in each zone with a view to recommending the best variety for planting.It was established that LOCAL will perform best and produce optimum grain yield while IAR1696 will give the least yields in Osun West Senatorial Zone.We also discovered that IAR1696 produced maximum grain yields in both Osun East and Central Senatorial Zones for which LOCAL and IT8D994 produced the least yields in the two zones respectively.