Pivotal to human development and the sustainable development goals is food security, which remains of substantial concern globally and in Nigeria, particularly during the COVID‐19 pandemic despite various palliatives and intervention initiatives launched to improve household welfare. This study examined the food security status of households during the pandemic and investigated its determinants using the COVID‐19 National Longitudinal Phone Survey (COVID‐19 NLPS). In analysing the data, descriptive statistics, bivariate as well as multivariate analysis were employed. Findings from the descriptive statistics showed that only 12% of the households were food secure, 5% were mildly food insecure, 24.5% were moderately food insecure and over half of the households (58.5%) experienced severe food insecurity. The result from the ordered probit regression identified socioeconomic variables (education, income and wealth status) as the main determinants of food security during the pandemic. This study indicates that over two‐thirds of households were threatened by food insecurity in Nigeria. The finding indicates the gross inadequacy of government palliative support and distribution. Thus, regarding policy implication, interventions and palliatives should be well planned and consistent with household size and needs.

PurposeDespite the global attempt at achieving goal 3 of the Sustainable Development Goals by improving health outcomes, some countries (West African countries inclusive) still do not spend a significant proportion of their income on health and they exhibit health outcomes that are still far below that of developed countries. Besides countries like Nigeria, Chad and Guinea-Bissau are experiencing worsening insecurity and political instability. This study, therefore, examines the effect of health expenditure on three health outcomes in the West African sub-region, while investigating the effect of the quality of governance in this nexus.Design/methodology/approachThis study conducts an instrumental variable approach (two-stage least squares regression) on a panel of 15 West African countries over the period 2000–2018. This study uses three proxies to measure health outcomes and six measures of the quality of governance were also considered.FindingsThe result of this study shows that all forms of health expenditures significantly influenced health outcomes. That is, there is a negative relationship between health expenditure, infant mortality and under-five mortality, but a positive relationship between health expenditure and life expectancy at birth. Besides, the general effect of the same quantity of public health spending is subject to the quality of governance because countries with a higher quality of governance benefit better from their public health spending.Originality/valueThis study, to the authors' knowledge, is the first empirical attempt to examine the role of governance in the health expenditure-health outcomes nexus in 15 ECOWAS countries, using different measures of health outcomes and governance.

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This study exclusively contributes to the health-environment discourse by using mortality rates, carbon emissions (proxy for environmental degradation), renewable energy and real per capita income to investigate these intrinsic relationships. This study uses an unbalanced sample of 47 Sub-Saharan African countries from 2005–2019 to reveal that: (1) both carbon emissions and renewable energy are associated with higher mortality rates; (2) real per capita income is associated with reducing mortality rates; (3) per capita income attenuates the effect of renewable energy on mortality rates, (4) persistency in mortalities exist; and (5) the health-environment-energy-income dynamics differ across income groups. Additionally, this study submits that the interaction of renewable energy and real per capita income dampens the positive effect of renewable energy on mortality rates and supports the argument that income levels lessen the extent of mortalities. Besides, these results vividly show that real per capita income reduces the devastating effect of renewable energy on infant and under-5 mortality rates from 0.942% to 0.09%, 2.42% to 0.55%, 1.04% to 0.09% and 2.8% to 0.64% for high and middle-income countries, respectively. This is a novel and significant contribution to the health-environment literature. Hence, real per capita income is a crucial determinant of mortality rate. Policy recommendations are discussed.

PurposeThe paper analyses the prevalence of extreme and multidimensional poverty in line with the sustainable development agenda. In addition, the paper examines the drivers of extreme poverty while accounting for the potential spillover effect of poverty in the region.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts the pooled OLS with Discroll-Kraay robust standard errors to control for cross-sectional dependence. In addition, given the strong potential for endogeneity of poverty index, the authors also employ the generalized method of moments (GMM), which accounts for simultaneity and endogeneity problems, and the spatial error and lag models to control for all forms of spatial and temporal dependence since the factors that affect poverty disperse across borders.FindingsThe study finds that in addition to the traditional drivers of poverty (unemployment, low per capita GDP growth and public debt), poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa is a symptom of a deeper structural problem (lack of access to water and sanitation, high level of corruption and low level of financial development, and frequent economic busts). Likewise, the results from the spatial econometric specification show, consistently across all the specifications, that there is a substantial spillover effect of poverty across the region.Originality/valueThe main novelty of the paper is that the authors investigate the “economic shrinkage hypothesis,” and examined the potential negative spillover effect of poverty in the region.

PurposeThis paper examines the long-run and dynamic causal relationship among air pollution, health expenditure and economic growth in Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey (MINT countries).Design/methodology/approachThe bounds test approach to cointegration and causality test was employed on data covering 1995–2018.FindingsThe study shows evidence of a long-run relationship among the variables in MINT countries and the causality test confirms the existence of a bidirectional causal nexus between health expenditure and economic growth in the four countries. It also confirms that there is a bidirectional causal relationship between carbon dioxide (CO2) emission and economic growth, except in Nigeria where a unidirectional causal relationship was found running from CO2 emissions to economic growth. In addition, a bidirectional causal relationship was found between air pollution and health expenditure in Turkey, while no causal relationship was found among these variables in Nigeria.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is limited by available data and it only focuses on four emerging economies. To address this, future studies can expand this scope to more emerging economies with severe air pollution and also extend the scope when more recent data becomes available.Practical implicationsThis study suggests that pollution standards in MINT countries should be monitored and enforced with transparency so as to mitigate its health implications and ensure the sustainability of economic growth.Social implicationsThe study confirms the importance of keeping air pollution as low as possible because of its negative effect on health and economic output.Originality/valueThe study accounts for the complexity of each MINT country instead of providing a general discussion on the relationship between air pollution, health expenditure and economic growth in MINT countries.

The paper succinctly looks at what quality assurance is. It further examines factors militating against assurance of quality and factors responsible for improving quality assurance. The second Section of the paper addresses effective service delivery and qualities of a good service provider. The third Section looks at SERVICOM and its role in effective service delivery. Obafemi Awolowo University is used as a Case Study. The paper concludes with recommendations for the sustenance of standards in Obafemi Awolowo University.

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