He made this commendation at the third Faculty Seminar where he further appreciated the Committee’s efforts which resulted in the publication of some of the papers presented at the first two seminars in the Augustine University Journal of Social Sciences (AUJSS). 

Professor Omoregbe reiterated the importance of seminars as an opportunity for lecturers and           students to improve on organizing and presentation of papers as well as the benefit of interactions with peers which is helpful towards research projects.

The first paper titled ‘Methodological Issues: A Critical Examination of Recent Issues in Research Data Analysis’ was delivered by Mr. Joel Owuru, Assistant Lecturer, Department of Economics. He explained that the motivation for the study stemmed from the observation that between 2014 and 2021, Nigeria was not on the list of countries that carried out globally relevant researches despite the consistently increasing participation of other African countries such as Egypt and South Africa. He attributed this to a lack of international relevance of the researches carried out by Nigerians as a result of use of inappropriate methodology. He described this situation as particularly disturbing because 60% of the criteria used for University Ranking is allotted to research. Hence, the paper was aimed at increasing the research strength of Augustine University lecturers in order to ensure the university is ranked among at least the top 100 in the world.  He further explained that different types of classification of research were based on the type of methodology used, explaining that although the researches in the Faculty of Sciences were rated based on the level of experimentation, the researches in the Faculty of Humanities, Management and the Social Sciences focused mainly on man and his         behavioural patterns.

He said every research should be conceptualised because every research is different. He concluded by suggesting that human capacity building be made compulsory because this will in turn affect the university positively.

The second paper titled, ‘Reporting Covid-19 and Pandemics: A Critique of Application of Backgrounding Information’ was co-authored by Dr. Ibitayo S. Popoola, Olufemi Oribamise and Sam Ejiwunmi, and presented by                 Dr. Popoola of the Department of Mass Communication. The objective of the paper was to examine the extent to which reporters applied professional background information in their reportage of Covid-19 when the pandemic broke out in Nigeria. The Agenda-Setting theory and Uses and Gratifications theory were used in explaining the research data. A sample size of 19 Print Media, which represented 53% of the population of print media in Lagos-Ibadan geographical area of Nigeria was used as research data.

Findings revealed that 30% of the studied newspapers that carried out a report on the pandemic failed to include a background information on it. The disease was only mentioned. No information about how it could be contracted, avoided or cured was provided. Hence, it could be implied that the media contributed indirectly to the many deaths recorded due to failure to provide sufficient background information about the pandemic as available online about a similar occurrence which happened in 1918.

He recommended a training and retraining of reporters. He added that policies should not affect dissemination of information on topics of national interest.

There were questions, suggestions and critiques of the presentations.

The Chairperson, FAHUMSS Seminar Committee, Dr. Grace Evbuomwan expressed gratitude to participants for attending the seminar. She added that the Department of Political Science and Department of Accounting and Finance would present papers at the next seminar which would be held in the first semester of the 2022/2023 Session.