EFFECT OF VITAMINS C AND E INTAKE ON BLOOD ... - EuroJournals

European Journal of Social Sciences - Volume 2, Number 1 (2006)
Government council (LGA) and the local government education authority (LGEA). Less than 3 % of
the community members are wage earners, they are mainly teachers and civil servants.
Household economy.
All the 114 households heads were male this might be as a result of the traditional under-
reporting of female headship. The age of house hold heads ranged between 30-70 yrs with the majority
in the 50-60 years bracket.
All the house hold heads were married with about 50% in polygamous marriages.
Majority of the house hold heads have between 5-7 children with 56% of them as farmers while 21%
are traders19% artisans and 4% in other menial jobs. The household heads derived their income from
their various occupations occasionally subsided with child labour such as hawking of goods and farm
products in cities and other neighboring towns.
The Average monthly income of household heads is #16, 578 about $102. The average monthly
expenditure is #9,994.8 about $80.
This expenditure is mainly on food items leaving a paltry balance of #4.586 that is $22. It is from this
balance that they buy clothes for the family, provide for the children’s school needs and purchase some
other basic materials. This indicates that the general standard of living is low.
Majority of the household heads in Nigeria are poor. In the rural areas, a significant number of
the household heads under study are poor. Poverty was higher among households headed by those
within the age groups 46-55 and 56-65. It was also observed that:
• The older the household head, the higher the likelihood he or she will be lacking education and
the household to live in poverty.
• Poverty incidence by employment status shows that households headed by wage earners have
less incidence of poverty but only about 1% of the household heads under study are wage
earners.
The socio-economic characteristic of policy makers that is the chairman of the local government who
was the only policy maker in the sample is on the high side. He is a political head and his salary is on
the high side. All local government chairmen, whether urban or rural earn the same salary.
Only 42 secondary school teachers were in the sample. They were few because the sizes of the schools
themselves were also small. All the teachers in the sample had the requisite qualifications for their
jobs. Their teaching experiences ranged between 3 – 10 years and above. However, only three of the
teachers had some vocational and technical experience hence the teachers were not competent to train
students in their desired vocational skills. There were 210 students in the sample. Their age ranged
from 11-20 years with the mean age of 17-19 years bracket. They were made up of 114 males
(55.77%) and 93 females (44.23%) The family size of the students ranged from 4 to 11. This large size
also affects the parents economy. The students said they eat 3 meals daily but further probing revealed
that the meals were mainly carbohydrates and poor in quality. Findings also showed that the students
always helped their parents in the farm and in other jobs to help as coping strategy. This also
confirmed the low socio-economic level of their parents. The consequence of this is absenteeism and
truancy thus resulting in low quality education, mass failure or outright drop out.
Absenteesim
The school teachers revealed that absenteeism and truancy were common phenomena in the schools.
The trend in school absenteeism and the reasons for this as indicated by teachers are presented in tables
2a and 2b below.
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