Maritime piracy and border crimes pose significant threats to Cameroon’s security and regional stability and this justifies why the Gulf of Guinea has emerged as a focal point of global concern in Africa. This tumultuous maritime environment has weathered ongoing challenges over time, necessitating a meticulous examination of its security landscape. The study argues that the ineffectiveness of Cameroon’s maritime security is largely due to weak legal framework, colonialism, inadequate enforcement mechanisms, corruption and lack of regional cooperation. It further highlights the fact that the country’s piracy laws are often ineffective, and enforcement agencies lack the capacity and resources to combat piracy and related crimes. In addition, Cameroon faces significant maritime security challenges in the Gulf of Guinea, including limited resources for maritime patrols, surveillance, and judicial capacity, inadequate ports and coastal infrastructures, corruption and the involvement of organized criminal networks in maritime crimes and the lack of trust between coastal communities and law enforcement agencies. The study that made use of primary and secondary data, reveals that poverty, unemployment, and lack of economic opportunities in coastal communities are the root causes of maritime insecurity, piracy, armed robbery and oil related crimes in the Gulf of Guinea. To address these threats, Gulf of Guinea countries need to strengthen their legal framework to ensure effective prosecution of maritime criminals and to align its laws with international standards and invest in maritime security capacity building, including training for coast guard personnel, intelligence gathering, and judicial personnel. The study makes necessary policy recommendations and concludes that, for peace to return in the Gulf of Guinea, the evolving nature of challenges necessitates continued efforts to address emerging threats in the dynamic maritime security landscape.

Background: Social media has become an integral part of daily life for adolescents but it is influencing their mental well being significantly. This study investigates social media usage patterns among students of a Government Senior Secondary School in Abuja and their effects on mental health. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with a sample of 265 students, selected through systematic random sampling. Data were collected on age, gender, family structure, social media use, experiences of cyberbullying, and mental health indicators via a structured self-administered questionnaire. Analysis utilized IBM-SPSS version 27, employing descriptive statistics for quantitative variables and Chi-square tests for categorical variables (p ≤ 0.05). Results: Findings revealed that 56.9% of respondents were aged 16-18 years, with 60% female. Most (58.5%) used social media for 1-3 hours daily, while 6.9% exceeded 10 hours. Motivations included social connection and entertainment, with 17.3% reporting experiences of cyberbullying. Mental health assessments indicated that 56.5% displayed poor mental health, though 42.3% retained optimism. Notably, family structure significantly affected digital engagement (p = 0.001). Conclusion: This study underscores the prevalent use of social media among adolescents and its substantial impact on mental health, highlighting factors like cyberbullying. The alarming rate of poor mental health emphasizes the need for targeted interventions, including digital literacy education, enhanced mental health support, and community programs to promote responsible social media use.

The Blind Assassin, is the masterpiece by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, whose complex structure, various themes and identity concerns have always been the focus of controversy among literary critics. However, few of them explore the otherization of male and female characters’ collective identities in the novel through narrative focalization. Thus, based on some theories relevant to identity concerns and feminist narratology, the paper tries to investigates how camera focalization simulating objective observation——constructs and others the collective identities of both sexes through embedded news clippings. The analysis reveals that female collective identity is othered through patriarchal mechanisms and the reduction of women to decorative objects under the gaze. Meanwhile, male collective identity undergoes otherization through intra-group power struggles. Thus, the paper exposes the co-domination and the co-shaping of both sexes by masculinity and patriarchal culture, and Atwood’s advocation of decentralized gender view and harmonious relationship between the two sexes, providing a reference for the relevant studies on identity politics and narrative forms.

This paper examines the overall quality of healthcare in Saudi Arabia and then explores the relationship between the health insurance (public and private) and the overall quality of health care. By reviewing publications such as journals, books, internet articles, presentations, dissertation, online sources and the fourth, this research is conducted by literature review methodology. We are interested in the following research questions: 1) What is the influence of health insurance on gaining access to quality health care services? 2) How can health insurance help in enhancing patient satisfaction and reducing financial distress and medical debts? And 3) What is the role of health care insurance in providing opportunities for timely medical interventions and reducing the cost of medical care? This study discovers that there has been an improvement in the quality of health care services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia because of the private and public health insurance policies. It can be concluded from the study that Saudi Arabia has come far enough in providing the health care insurance to its pilgrims and also the employees from the foreign countries but there is always a place to make changes and introduce policies that can help everyone irrespective of the regional differences, socio-economic differences or religious differences, and everyone can get the best quality of health care. We propose an integrated theory of factors impacting on the quality of healthcare in the context of Saudi Arabia.