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THE DISCOURSE OF GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCE IN SELECTED NOVELS OF MAYA ANGELOU AND TERRY MCMILLAN
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ANALYSIS OF THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF A COMMON CURRENCY FOR THE SECOND WEST AFRICAN MONETARY ZONE
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SAFETY AND DISTRESS RESPONSE SYSTEM IN NIGERIA‘S INTERNATIONAL AIRPORTS
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Page will reload when a filter is selected or excluded.- African American literature 1 results 1
- African American literature has been predominantly a male-preserve in the task of narrating the experience of slavery and its relics of denigration before the advent of reactionary literature by black female writers. Studies on female-authored African American literary works have concentrated on responding to male-authored representations of the tensions of racism, internal crisis of man-woman relationships and the challenges of empowering the black female character. Little attention has been paid to African American female writings across generations and gender categories. This study, therefore, investigates the narrative thrusts of selected works of Maya Angelou and Terry McMillan to determine the dimensions of divergence across generations of African American female writers. The study adopts Alice Walker‘s womanist theory and bell hooks‘ feminist theory which account for differences in the construction of black women consciousness. Six novels – Maya Angelou‘s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), Gather Together in my Name (1974), and The Heart of a Woman (1981), and Terry McMillan‘s Waiting to Exhale (1992), A Day Late and a Dollar Short (2001) and The Interruption of Everything (2005) – were purposively selected. The texts are subjected to literary and comparative analyses. From the first autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to the last The Heart of a Woman, Angelou offers detailed testimony on the effects of displacement on the individual psyche and the black community. Maya Angelou‘s selected novels reveal the creation of a collective communal memory through the use of the autobiographical prose form. Angelou‘s narratives reveal her understanding of history, her reverence for memory of collective black folk tradition and represent the Black Arts era. In contrast, Terry McMillan‘s Waiting to Exhale, A Day Late and a Dollar Short and The Interruption of Everything reveal a paradigm shift from the communal experience to the individual, the internal crisis among individuals in the family and aspiration of specific sentiments as she projects the female character as ambitious and daring. McMillan‘s fiction stands out in several ways. She revises and borrows recognisable literary conventions to project the changing roles of women to reinforce her radical perspective. However, the choice of professionally successful black women as characters in her novels relates to the drastic increase in the population of working class women in the 1990s and reflexive of the post-womanist tradition. Her works accentuate the quest for personal liberty, romance and intimate relationships as the central conflicts facing black female protagonists. Although two decades separate Angelou‘s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Terry McMillan‘s Waiting to Exhale, a close reading of the novels reveals that the texts derive qualitative interpretations from the unique difference in ideas and aesthetics represented by Alice Walker, bell hooks and other Black feminists. While Maya Angelou‘s novels keep within the womanist tradition, those by Terry McMillan are radically feminist and modernist in orientation. Thus, the two writers exemplify the Black Arts era and post-womanist literary generation respectively and differently situate the novels within specific historical, socio-political, economic, gendered and literary contexts. Key words: Generational difference, Womanism, African American literature, Maya Angelou, Terry McMillan. Word count: 498 1 results 1
- Airport safety 1 results 1
- Airports require complete safety initiatives with a maximum of 20 minutes response time to distress situation. They are therefore regulated by International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standards. However, in Nigeria, airport safety and distress response have been of great concern due to inadequate infrastructure. This study, therefore, examined safety facilities and response capability to distress situations in Nigeria international airports. The effects of haphazard spatial developments within the airports and their environments were also examined. The available infrastructure for safety and distress response initiatives were considered using ICAO check-list to determine their adequacy. Four international airports namely: Murtala Muhammed (Lagos), Aminu Kano (Kano), Nnamdi Azikwe (Abuja), and Port Harcourt were purposively selected. Three questionnaires were administered to 618 airport operators, 369 users and 462 neighbours in soliciting information on various aspects of safety and distress response initiatives including terminal buildings, navigational aids, runways and fire-fighting equipment and adequacy of staff training for operating Safety Management Systems (SMS) effectively. This was complemented with Key Informant Interview (KII) with 12 technical staff from 5 airport operators. Satellite imagery data were used to acquire spatial information on the airports. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse data on adequacy of safety facilities, staff training and distress responsiveness. Pearson correlation was used to determine the relationship between safety infrastructure and airport age. Analysis of Variance was used to determine variations in airport operators‘ safety awareness as recommended by ICAO. The KII data were content analysed, while raster model was used to determine the landuse pattern. Analysis were done at p<0.05. Functionality of safety facilities fell short of ICAO standards in all the airports by 30%, 25%, 20% and 10% in Lagos, Kano, Port-Harcourt and Abuja respectively. A positive relationship existed between airport age and obsolescence of safety infrastructure (r=0.12). Lagos airport had the most obsolete safety facilities. KII also revealed breakdown of infrastructure in the airports. There were significant variations in safety awareness among airport operators (F=11.95). Safety awareness was highest among the staff of Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (34.9%) and lowest among airport handling agents (12.2%). Ninety-one percent of airport operators sampled indicated distress response as being poor. Response time varied from 30 minutes in Abuja to 54 minutes in Lagos. Sixty percent of the users considered airport service quality as very low. Forty-six percent of airport operators indicated that they had no training since employed. Spatial analysis of the airports and their environment showed that Lagos and Kano airports suffered safety threats from poor waste management and chaotic traffic patterns. Safety and distress response capacity was relatively low in all the international airports investigated. There is an urgent need for the airports to be managed in line with international standards. Staff training should also be prioritised and spatial developments around airport s need to be controlled. Keywords: Airport safety, Distress response, Spatial development, Civil aviation standards, Nigerian international airports. Word Count: 463 1 results 1
- Asymmetric shocks 1 results 1
- Behavioural models 1 results 1
- Civil aviation 1 results 1
- Distress response 1 results 1
- Fiscal policy distortion 1 results 1
- Generational difference 1 results 1
- Maya Angelou 1 results 1
- Optimum Currency Area 1 results 1
- Spatial development 1 results 1
- Terry McMillan 1 results 1
- The second West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ), comprising The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, was initiated in 1999 to fast-track the common monetary policy objective of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). However, uncertainties about the economic implications of the policy have been major obstacles to regional integration. Economists and policymakers are yet to agree on the potential costs and benefits of a common currency. Available empirical studies on WAMZ focused separately on the elements of costs and benefits of monetary union, which makes them limited in scope. This study, therefore, offered an integrated analysis of the costs and benefits of a common currency in WAMZ spanning 1980 to 2009. A two-step methodological procedure, based on the Optimum Currency Area (OCA) and the New Optimum Currency Area (NOCA) frameworks, were used to estimate the costs and benefits of monetary union in WAMZ. First, behavioural models, capturing the elements of costs (asymmetric shocks, loss of seigniorage and fiscal policy distortion) and benefits (trade creation, financial integration effects and policy coordination gains), were estimated with the Vector Auto-regression (VAR), Error Correction Model (ECM) for each of the sampled countries and panel estimation techniques for the group. Second, weighted composite indices were constructed for the costs and benefits indicators using the parameter estimates obtained from the various estimation techniques. The VAR impulse response and forecast error methods were employed to estimate countries‟ response to shocks. Robustness tests, including data calibration for the net-benefit using a money metric baseline and ranking, were carried out to permit comparison of results among countries. Fiscal policy distortion and loss of seigniorage were the main cost indicators of monetary union in the zone rather than asymmetric shocks. The share of fiscal policy distortion stood at 72.4%, while loss of seigniorage contributed 18.4% to the costs of monetary union. Ghana recorded the highest costs of 36.0% for fiscal policy distortion and 65.0% for loss of seigniorage in the zone. The Gambia had the lowest seigniorage cost of 8.0%. Considerable variations existed among Sierra Leone, The Gambia and Nigeria as fiscal policy distortion accounted for 30.0%, 22.0% and 12.0%, respectively. Trade creation shared 89.0% of the total benefits for the zone. Policy coordination gains had the lowest share of 1.6% for the region. Trade creation gains ranged between 41.0% and 3.0% among the countries with Sierra Leone and Nigeria sharing the highest UNIVERSITY OF IBADAN LIBRARY iii and lowest gains, respectively. The net-benefit of monetary union for the zone was potentially high with substantial variations among members. Sierra Leone and Nigeria had the highest and lowest net-benefit respectively from the ranking scale. Trade creation accounted for a substantial proportion of the potential benefits of common currency in WAMZ. However, fiscal policy distortion constitutes serious policy challenge to monetary union in the zone. Dealing with this challenge may require in the short-run, systematic macroeconomic adjustments to improve fiscal-monetary policy interactions in order to enhance the benefits of monetary union in the zone. Key words: Optimum Currency Area, Behavioural models, Seigniorage, Fiscal policy distortion, Asymmetric shocks. Word count: 489 1 results 1
- Womanism 1 results 1
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