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Chemical characterization of Portland limestone cement products collected across the nine existing cement manufacturing plants in Nigeria was conducted using Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer (EDXRF) with the aim of determining conformity with global and local standards and investigating likely variation in quality resulting from differences in the sources of major raw materials, especially limestone used in production. The cement samples are composed essentially of CaO, SiO2, Al2O3, Fe2O3, MgO, Na2O, K2O and SO3 while P2O5, MnO and TiO2 were present in trace amount. In addition to oxide compositions, the mineralogical components: Alite (C3S), Belite (C2S), Celite (C3A), and Ferrite (C4AF), and other cement quality control variables such as Lime Saturation Factor, Silica Modulus and Alumina Modulus of all the nine cement samples analyzed in this study are in agreement with the specifications for Portland limestone cement published by the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON), the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), and the British Standards Institution (BSI). The nine cement products also have their compositions in close proportion indicating none of the products is superior in quality irrespective of manufacturer or production site, a common misconception in the Nigerian cement market.

The purpose of this paper is to address the corporate governance system in Nigeria as to whether it is likely capable of mitigating the agency problem. Following an overview of both the market-based and the institutionally-based corporate governance models the authors propose the institutionally-based model for Nigeria considering the country’s peculiarities. This is the first attempt to specifically suggest that the institutionally-based model would be preferred for Nigeria against the present market-based model that is in operation. This paper has implications for regulators as there is the need to provide adequate protection for investors in view of the weak enforcement and compliance mechanism that obtains in Nigeria.

It is argued that large shareholders have enormous influence over their companies as their ability to monitor the executives can mitigate the agency problems.This paper examines how large shareholders are related to company performance after distinguishing domestic large shareholders from the foreign large shareholders Using a panel of 58 companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange with 222 company-year observations from 2009 to 2012, firm-level fixed effects regression was used for analysis.We find evidence that domestic large shareholders are associated with better company performance while foreign large shareholders show a concave relationship with company performance with inflection point at 31.88%.The empirical result also shows that the joint presence of the both domestic large shareholders and foreign large shareholders in companies seems to make them pursue overall wealth maximization objective of the company.The result is consistent with the contention that concentrated ownership remains an effective corporate governance mechanism in an environment with weak investor protection rights.The study contributes to the corporate governance literature of the substitution effect of large shareholders for effective corporate governance practice.

This paper examines directors’ remuneration disclosure transparency in an emerging economy (Nigeria).We specifically examine how the block share ownership influences the level of transparency in the disclosure of directors’ remuneration in a sample of companies listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 2012. Using ordinary least squares and binary logistic regressions to examine the relationship, we find that block share ownership is associated with lower transparent disclosure of directors’ remuneration.The result shows a positive relationship between audit quality and transparent disclosure of directors’ remuneration. The study finds that the transparency score is less than 40%.On the whole, we provide evidence that managers in Nigerian Listed Companies are inclined not to make voluntary disclosure of their remuneration to the public.This paper has implication for policy makers and regulatory authorities in Nigeria on the need to embark on remuneration disclosures reforms so as to make directors’ remuneration disclosure mandatory for Nigerian Listed Companies to make it comparable with accepted global good practice.This study contributes to the remuneration disclosure transparency literature by providing support for the expropriation hypothesis in the behaviour of block shareholders from an emerging economy whose market is very much different from those of developed economies.

Citizens of 9 different English-speaking countries (N = 619) evaluated the average, or typical, citizen of 5 English-speaking countries (Great Britain, Canada, Nigeria, United States, Australia) on 9 pairs of bipolar adjectives. Participants were drawn from Australia, Botswana, Canada, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, the United States, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. There were statistically significant similarities in the rankings of the 5 stimulus countries on 8 of the 9 adjective dimensions and a strong convergence of autostereotypes and heterostereotypes on many traits. The results relate to previous stereotyping research and traditional methods of assessing the accuracy of national stereotypes.