Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln

 

Date of this Version

5-2012

Abstract

Introduction

In Nigeria, governments constitute the largest employer of labour – Federal, State, and Local Governments, including their parastatals. As a result of this, the burden of paying retirement benefits appear to be too much for each succeeding government of the day – pension and gratuities have remained unpaid for years by the various levels of government.

Because of this, many workers, upon retirement have nothing to fall back upon, and therefore, languish and eventually die prematurely and in penury. In extreme cases, retirement benefits were only paid posthumously to the next-of-kin of deserving workers.

Generally, Nigerian workers/employees in public or private sector of the economy have a very poor attitude to saving/investment. The general feeling or attitude is that one must earn 'enough' to be able to save or invest. Nigerian workers hardly have savings or investments. Investment in the stock market is seen largely as for the super-rich. Therefore, only a very tiny segment of the Nigerian workers are familiar with the operations of the capital market.

Scope

This study covers four tertiary institutions in Kogi State, namely:

i. Kogi State University, Anyigba

ii. Kogi State polytechnic, Lokoja

iii. Federal College of Education, Okene

iv. Kogi State College of Education, Ankpa

The study was targeted at the professional librarians in those institutions. The choice of librarians, excluding other library staff – intermediate and junior staff was a deliberate decision by the author. It was designed to test our earlier assumption or observation that Nigerian workers are poor at saving or investment. The author wanted to find out the extent to which this assumption is true of librarians in Kogi State tertiary institutions.

The knowledge of whether librarians invest in the capital market is necessary to be able establish their investment status or profile. As a group of professionals, who are engaged in information dissemination, the author was of the view that the type of information they disseminate to workers should include stock market news to staff and students on their various campuses. Of course, if they themselves are ignorant of the stock market, it necessarily means that they would have nothing to offer to their clientele.

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