Textile companies in Nigeria have complained of stifling competition against the backdrop of challenges of declining endogenous and exogenous resources. Using electricity and capacity utilization as proxies, we show that electricity supply is a significant determinant of performance. We recommend, among others, that Public electricity supply to the textile companies should be taken as a state of emergency to ensure that there is uninterrupted power supply. Government at various levels should embark on intensive advocacy for Nigerians to develop a culture of using locally made goods while leading by example. Opinion molding should be employed both in the public and private sectors.

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Background:Community pharmacy has been a lucrative area of practice for pharmacists in Jos, Nigeria, until about the turn of the millennium where a decline in viability of the business has been observed.Objective:This study assessed the entrepreneurial skills of community pharmacists, the business performance of community pharmacies and the impact of their entrepreneurial skills on business performance.Methods:A cross sectional survey was conducted by administering a pretested questionnaire to 30 community pharmacists in Jos. An adaptation of the Bernelli model and the expanded Katz (1974)/Herron (1990) Skill Typology Model was used to assess nine entrepreneurial skills - product, organizational, industry, networking, leadership, executive, entrepreneurial, marketing and money skills; while sales growth, net profit and stock growth were used to assess business performance. Frequency distribution of results was presented, with further analysis done with the Epi-Info software using the chi square test of association.Result:The results from this study showed that community pharmacies in Jos do possess requisite entrepreneurial skills, but to varying extents. Product skills ranked highest while money skills and entrepreneurial skills ranked least, portraying a need for skills enhancement in these areas. Business performance was suboptimal, being rated as average or poor by 56.6% of respondents. However, most respondents (90%) still assessed their businesses as profitable. Money skills had a significant impact on business performance (P=0.03) and stock growth (P=0.04); while stock growth was significantly affected by leadership skills (P=0.002) and entrepreneurial skills (0.02). Net profit was significantly affected by industry skills (P=0.008).Conclusions:Community pharmacy business is still a profitable business venture in Jos though business performance is sub optimal. The entrepreneurial skills set of a community pharmacist set has an impact on business performance with money skills, leadership skills and entrepreneurial skills being most significant. This study recommended that entrepreneurial skills of community pharmacists in Nigeria are further developed to improve pharmaceutical business performance.

The service sector of the economy has become a major role in the economies of most nations of the world and citizens living in such economies are living in increasingly service based economies. This is because the service sector plays a dominant role in creating value in such economies and by extension, the purchasing patterns of consumers and managerial decisions of the providers of these services to a large extent are influenced by activities of players in the sector. For the service sector to maintain dominance in the economic sector, the quality of services being provided should meet or exceed customers' expectations. This research work seeks to assess the impact of the quality of banking services on the profitability of banks. To study this, we postulated three research hypotheses, relied on secondary data using the SPSS package, analysed data through the regression analysis and found out that there is no significant relationship between volume of Deposit and investment in service quality by banks in Nigeria, there is no significant relationship between investments in service quality and volume of turnover by banks and that there is no significant relationship between investments in banks' service quality and the profitability of banks in Nigeria. The absence of a clear strong relationship between service quality improvements and profitability in the Nigerian banking sector is an indication that banks are not really showing improvements in the provision of banking services that would draw the attention of customers.Based on the findings, we conclude that to be able to achieve repeat purchase by customers in the increasing competitive banking business, banks should organize their operations according to the needs expressed (or in several cases even not expressed) by their customers.