The protection of consumers of financial services has attracted a lot of debates following the global financial crisis of 2007 to 2009. As a result, there have been series of reforms in a number of jurisdictions across the globe. Despite this development some countries still lag behind and Nigeria is no exception. This study examines the problems of consumer protection in Nigeria, with specific reference to the bank consumers. The aim is to consider whether the Nigeria consumer protection regime provides "sufficient protection to bank consumers and whether it should be reformed". The study also focuses on the role of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in consumer protection, its dispute resolution mechanism and the practical challenges. The test of sufficiency will be analysed and discussed, using 'consistency', 'efficiency' and 'accessibility' in order to illustrate the existing weaknesses in resolving consumer dispute. The approach in this study is doctrinal analysis. In all, the findings suggest that there is need, to reform the consumer protection regime in the banking sector and enforce laws which will address issues highlighted in the study to enable the users of banking services in Nigeria to obtain an appropriate level of protection through regulatory processes. This study, therefore, also provides a comparative analysis between United Kingdom and Nigeria, using current consumer protection framework in the United Kingdom in making proposals for the needed reforms in Nigeria. The study thus concludes with the recommendation that the current Nigerian consumer protection regime does not offer adequate protection; hence protecting consumers require a holistic approach which includes effective consumer protection framework, enforcement, coordination and cooperation from different stakeholders.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T16:00:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 arquivo5835_1.pdf: 1345974 bytes, checksum: a8195e26dbc8a8b67dc9b1d0a6816814 (MD5) license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007 / Uma grande quantidade de informações, sobre diversos assuntos, se encontra disponível na Web. Essa quantidade cresce ano a ano e, aliados às informações, estão os formatos com que elas estão representadas (PDF, DOC, RTF, HTML, TEX, por exemplo.). Certos formatos dependem de tecnologias e/ou plataformas específicas, dificultando assim o acesso às informações contidas no documento. Tendo em vista esse problema, surge a necessidade de se ter formas para a conversão entre formatos específicos. Muitas ferramentas são oferecidas nesse sentido, porém geralmente oferecem poucas possibilidades de conversão, um ou dois formatos em média. Outro problema gerado pela grande quantidade de informações disponíveis na Web é a questão da filtragem do que realmente é interessante ao usuário que efetua uma busca sobre determinado assunto. Os atuais buscadores trazem como resultados documentos completos com diversas informações além das necessárias ao usuário. A análise do que é ou não interessante fica a cargo do próprio usuário, tornando-se um trabalho manual. A extração automática de informações nos documentos dispostos na Web se torna difícil, pois nem todos os documentos apresentam seus conteúdos de forma estruturada, mas sim, muitos deles apresentam conteúdos semi-estruturados ou ainda, não-estruturados. Na tentativa de amenizar alguns desses problemas foi proposta a construção de um Framework para conversão entre formatos de documentos e extração de informações dos mesmos. Esse Framework é constituído de dois módulos que utilizam o formato XML como intermediador na conversão requerida. Esses módulos são: (1) o de conversão de formatos de entrada específicos para XML, que também é responsável pela extração de informação dos documentos; e (2) o de conversão de XML para formatos de saída específicos. Com a utilização do XML, os documentos convertidos tornam-se estruturados, facilitando assim o processo automático de extração de informações. Esta dissertação abrange o primeiro módulo descrito acima e parte de resultados alcançados por outro trabalho previamente realizado, onde foram construídas funcionalidades para os formatos de entrada PDF, PS, DOC, RTF e HTML. As contribuições propostas a partir deste trabalho são: adição do formato TEX (LaTeX) como mais uma possibilidade de entrada; e reorganizar a arquitetura do Framework previamente desenvolvido, para que este seja acessado como um serviço Web, utilizando os conceitos de Web Services

Tirant parti de notre expérience avec une approche traditionnelle des environnements d'assistance ambiante (AAL) qui repose sur l'utilisation de nombreuses technologies hétérogènes dans les déploiements, cette thèse étudie la possibilité d'une approche simplifiée et complémentaire, ou seul un sous-ensemble hardware réduit est déployé, initiant un transfert de complexité vers le côté logiciel. Axé sur les aspects de raisonnement dans les systèmes AAL, ce travail a permis à la proposition d'un moteur d'inférence sémantique adapté à l'utilisation particulière à ces systèmes, répondant ainsi à un besoin de la communauté scientifique. Prenant en compte la grossière granularité des données situationnelles disponible avec une telle approche, un ensemble de règles dédiées avec des stratégies d'inférence adaptées est proposé, implémenté et validé en utilisant ce moteur. Un mécanisme de raisonnement sémantique novateur est proposé sur la base d'une architecture de raisonnement inspiré du système cognitif. Enfin, le système de raisonnement est intégré dans un framework de provision de services sensible au contexte, se chargeant de l'intelligence vis-à-vis des données contextuelles en effectuant un traitement des événements en direct par des manipulations ontologiques complexes. L’ensemble du système est validé par des déploiements in-situ dans une maison de retraite ainsi que dans des maisons privées, ce qui en soi est remarquable dans un domaine de recherche principalement cantonné aux laboratoires / Leveraging our experience with the traditional approach to ambient assisted living (AAL) which relies on a large spread of heterogeneous technologies in deployments, this thesis studies the possibility of a more “stripped down” and complementary approach, where only a reduced hardware subset is deployed, probing a transfer of complexity towards the software side, and enhancing the large scale deployability of the solution. Focused on the reasoning aspects in AAL systems, this work has allowed the finding of a suitable semantic inference engine for the peculiar use in these systems, responding to a need in this scientific community. Considering the coarse granularity of situational data available, dedicated rule-sets with adapted inference strategies are proposed, implemented, and validated using this engine. A novel semantic reasoning mechanism is proposed based on a cognitively inspired reasoning architecture. Finally, the whole reasoning system is integrated in a fully featured context-aware service framework, powering its context awareness by performing live event processing through complex ontological manipulation. the overall system is validated through in-situ deployments in a nursing home as well as private homes over a few months period, which itself is noticeable in a mainly laboratory-bound research domain

The marine environment provides essential ecosystem services that are critical to the functioning of the earth’s life support system and the maintenance of human well-being. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are recognised as being the mechanism though which marine natural capital may be conserved. This thesis focuses on the value associated with marine conservation in a case study area, Lyme Bay, England where a ‘closed area’ was created in 2008. A review of literature spanning 20 years shows that despite sound ecological knowledge of a marine area, the reliance on traditional neo-classical economic valuations for marine spatial planning can obscure other issues pertinent to the ecosystem approach. A further valuation of the marine leisure and recreation industry shows that the industry is of economic significance and that the MPA enables the protection of the most valuable sites but has limited benefits for protecting the full resource base. In terms of ecological value, a ‘service orientated framework’ was developed to enable decision makers to understand the links between benthic species, ecological function and indirect ecosystem services. Results spatially identify which ecosystem services occur and demonstrate the value of the MPA in ensuring delivery of these ecosystem services. In relation to the social value of the MPA the research reveals that support for the MPA is strong amongst the majority of stakeholder groups. Values are expressed as the economic, environmental and social benefits of the MPA. However, there have been clear social costs of the MPA policy and these have been borne by mobile and static gear fishermen and charter boat operators. Each valuation methodology can inform decision making. Though, if ecosystem service valuation is to become a deliberative tool for marine conservation and planning, then there is a need for a larger societal discussion on what activities and trade-offs society considers acceptable.