https://ijidjournal.org/index.php/ijid <p>The International Journal of Intellectual Discourse (IJID) is a regional and continental open-access, peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Faculties of Management Sciences and Social Sciences, Sa'adu Zungur University, Gadau, Bauchi State - Nigeria. This journal, which is published quarterly, is aimed at driving and expanding knowledge in the areas of social sciences, management sciences, and humanities by providing opportunities for publishing research findings and ground-breaking discoveries, new concepts, or theory, exchange of ideas, circulate scholarly opinion and to enhance collaboration among researchers across a broad spectrum of disciplines, such as Accounting, Management, Business Administration, Economics, Human Resource Management, Organisational Behaviour, Banking, Finance, Marketing, and any other related areas.</p> Sa'adu Zungur University, Gadau, Bauchi State - Nigeria en-US International Journal of Intellectual Discourse 2636-4832 https://ijidjournal.org/index.php/ijid/article/view/1193 <p>The rapid expansion of digital banking has reshaped service delivery, yet existing research has emphasised technological determinants of customer satisfaction while paying less attention to employees. This systematic review examines the influence of employee engagement on customer satisfaction in digital banking, synthesising evidence from contemporary literature. <br>Guided by the PRISMA 2020 framework, a systematic search was conducted across Scopus, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, Emerald Insight, and SpringerLink for studies published between January 2015 and April 2026. Following predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, 51 peer-reviewed studies were selected and analysed thematically. The review identifies seven major themes: employee engagement dimensions, customer satisfaction determinants, technology versus human interaction, employee engagement and service quality, the influence of engagement on satisfaction, challenges in digital banking, and future research trends. Employee engagement remains a critical driver of customer satisfaction despite increasing automation, chiefly through its effect on service quality, CRM effectiveness, and discretionary employee behaviours. Digital technologies enhance efficiency but do not replace engaged employees in managing complex, trust-based, and emotionally sensitive interactions. The review highlights theoretical, methodological, and geographical gaps and proposes directions for future research, concluding that employee engagement should be treated as a strategic capability that complements digital transformation and strengthens customer satisfaction and competitive performance in banking.</p> G. Chinyerem Adeniji Favour Chisom Nwafor Oluwakemi Onayemi Copyright (c) 2026 2026-09-01 2026-09-01 9 3 https://ijidjournal.org/index.php/ijid/article/view/1194 <p>This study examines the relationship between marketing productivity metrics and firm financial performance, with particular emphasis on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging markets. Guided by the PRISMA framework, the study undertakes a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed articles published between 2019 and 2025 and retrieved from Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and ScienceDirect. Following a structured screening and eligibility assessment process, 28 studies were included and analysed using thematic synthesis. The findings indicate that key marketing productivity metrics, including Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI), Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), are positively associated with financial performance. However, the relationship is largely indirect, operating through enhanced marketing efficiency, marketing effectiveness, analytics capability, and data-driven decision-making. The review further shows that organisations adopting integrated marketing measurement systems achieve superior performance outcomes compared with those relying on isolated metrics. Despite these benefits, adoption among SMEs in emerging economies remains constrained by limited analytical capabilities, inadequate technological infrastructure, and low data literacy. The study contributes to Marketing Accountability Theory by demonstrating how marketing measurement and analytics support organisational value creation. It also offers practical recommendations and a phased framework to guide SME adoption of marketing productivity metrics in emerging<br>market contexts.&nbsp;</p> Rowland Worlu Kofoworola Victoria Adegbuyi Copyright (c) 2026 2026-09-01 2026-09-01 9 3 https://ijidjournal.org/index.php/ijid/article/view/1195 <p>This study examined the effects of insecurity (cattle rustling and kidnapping) on Agropreneurship (livestock farming and crop production) in Katsina State; Strategies for survival. The study adopted descriptive survey research design. The population of the study consisted of all 750 small scale farmers that are registered with Farmers’ Cooperative Association and a sample size of 254 farmers was determined using Krejcie and Morgan formula. Multiple regression technique was employed. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS v.22) and SmartPLS-4 were used to analyze the data collected. The result shows that cattle rustling and kidnapping have significant and negative effects on livestock production in Katsina state. Also, the result indicated that cattle rustling and kidnapping has a negative and significant effect on crop production in Katsina state. The study therefore, recommends that Agropreneurs need to adopt online marketing means to sell their products. This will go a long way in reducing the threat of insecurities in their lives and products.</p> Abubakar Saddiq Yusuf Copyright (c) 2026 2026-09-01 2026-09-01 9 3 https://ijidjournal.org/index.php/ijid/article/view/1196 <p>This paper looks at the implications of agricultural financing, food security and Nigeria’s economic growth. Scope of the study was from 1981 to 2024 while the data was sourced from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)Statistical bulletin 2024 and World Development Indicators (WDI). Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) was used to run the regression. The variables used in the study includes the food production index, credit to agriculture, agricultural output, inflation rate, interest rate and gross capital formation. The results showed that agricultural financing and food security had a positive impact on the economic growth at the short run and a negative impact in the long run and the recommendations is for the government to fund the Nigerian agricultural sector, insecurity must be reduced in order to facilitate food security and exchanged rate must be well managed to facilitate agricultural productivity in the economy.&nbsp;</p> Adebimpe Oke Margaret Amamizo Ogunnubi Hezekiah Copyright (c) 2026 2026-09-01 2026-09-01 9 3 https://ijidjournal.org/index.php/ijid/article/view/1197 <p>West African region has been bedeviled by incessant and persistent armed violence, which perpetrated mainly by small arms and light weapons as instruments of choice. This resulted in human security crisis, which necessitates multilateral efforts towards containing the crisis, however, the problem persists. This paper examines the trend and nature of small arms and light weapons proliferation in West African, and explores the regional mechanisms adopted in controlling the menace and the challenges been encountered in their implementation. The paper utilizes documentary research as its methodology, and adopts the complex <br>interdependence theory as its theoretical framework. The paper discovers that SALW proliferation in the West African region has assumed worrisome dimension, and given the enormity of their indiscriminate spread and misuse by the various armed groups, have resulted in perpetrating heinous crimes and unleashing violence in the region, the magnitude of which creates serious humanitarian and economic challenges more than what one nation in the region can contain. The paper also discovers that West African region adopts two strategic multilateral mechanisms namely: The ECOWAS Moratorium and the ECOWAS Convention in <br>addressing the challenges of SALW proliferation, however, after two decades the problem escalates and persists. Thus, the paper concludes that the failure of the multilateral efforts to control the proliferation and misuse of SALW is the reason behind the escalation and persistence of the crises as evidenced in the rise of terrorism and Insurgency, transnational crimes, armed banditry, particularly in the half a decade. Hence, the paper recommends the effective review of the multilateral mechanisms to accommodate the current challenges, also member states in ECOWAS region should renew its political commitments to ensure the effective control of the SALW proliferation. There should also be wider public enlightenment campaigns to educate the citizens of ECOWAS region about these multilateral instruments and mechanisms, so as to enable them make their positive contributions toward achieving the desired goals.</p> Sani Zango AbdulAziz Tanko Magajiya Jibril Idris Abubakar Abdullahi Sale Aminu Copyright (c) 2026 2026-09-01 2026-09-01 9 3 https://ijidjournal.org/index.php/ijid/article/view/1199 <p>Employee engagement remains one of the most persistent challenges facing modern organizations: industry surveys consistently report that less than a third of employees are actively engaged in their work. This study examined the joint influence of three organizational levers on employee engagement — mentorship quality, technical skill development, and learning flexibility (i.e., the autonomy employees are given over when, how, and what they learn) — within a first-stage moderated mediation framework. A cross-sectional survey was administered to 250 full-time employees drawn, via stratified convenience sampling, from five functional departments of a mid-sized organization (68% response rate among 368 employees invited). The proposed model was estimated using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) in SmartPLS 4, with 5,000 bootstrap resamples used to generate bias corrected and accelerated (BCa) 95% confidence intervals. The measurement model showed adequate convergent validity (all outer loadings &gt; .78, AVE &gt; .67, composite reliability &gt; .89) and discriminant validity (HTMT &lt; .48 for all construct pairs). All path coefficients reported below are standardized (β). Mentorship quality was significantly and positively related to employee engagement, both as a total effect (β = .27, SE = .06, 95% CI [.15, .39], p &lt; .001) and, to a smaller degree, as a direct effect controlling for technical skill development (β = .17, SE = .06, 95% CI [.05, .29], p = .005), consistent with partial mediation. Technical skill development significantly mediated the mentorship–engagement relationship (indirect effect = .106, 95% CI [.058, .166]). Learning flexibility showed a significant main effect on technical skill development (β = .12, SE = .06, 95% CI [.00, .24], p = .044), but its interaction with mentorship quality was only marginally significant (β = .13, SE = .07, 95% CI [-.01, .27], p = .061), and the formal index of moderated mediation was not statistically significant (index = .049, 95% CI [-.002, .105]), although conditional indirect effects were significant and numerically larger at higher levels of learning flexibility. Because the design is cross-sectional and relies on single-source self-report data, these findings are interpreted as associational rather than causal. The results support mentorship and perceived technical skill growth as robust, complementary correlates of engagement, while suggesting that learning flexibility’s moderating role warrants further investigation with larger and more heterogeneous samples. <br>Implications for the design of learning and development (L&amp;D) programs and for future PLS SEM-based workforce research are discussed.&nbsp;</p> Hezekiah O. Falola Miracle E. Sunny-Ekanem Copyright (c) 2026 2026-09-01 2026-09-01 9 3