Abstract
The manufacturing sectors in Nigeria may have benefited from a symbiotic
relationship with governmental regulatory bodies due to their profit-driven
intentions as well as their crucial contributions towards job creation, poverty
eradication, and social and fiscal obligations. Such a connection puts the
workers at risk and may jeopardise the government's ability to fulfil its
statutory supervisory obligations. To close this knowledge gap, the
performance enhancement of OSH through effective government safety
leadership is investigated. The present investigation utilised a mixed-methods
research design, integrating both qualitative and quantitative research
methodologies through a fixed explanatory sequential QUAN-dominant mixedmethod
strategy to examine perceptions of the three key major stakeholders
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regarding existing safety measures in the manufacturing industry, their
efficacy, and possible interventions to enhance their applicability to revitalize
OHS practises. A cross-sectional research design was adopted in collecting
data from both registered (196, with three participants drawn from each,
representing about 56% of the total population of 353) and non-registered (15)
workplaces located in the cities of three Nigerian states, totalling 633 required
participants. This work employed a combination of simple random and
convenience sampling methods to determine the desired sample size. A total of
800 semi-structured questionnaires were distributed to mitigate the possibility
of non-response bias among the respondents. The blue-collar workers
constituted the unit of analysis for this phase. Findings indicate that the
influence of government safety leadership (SL) is not supported in the safety
performance behaviours of both employees and employers in the Nigerian
manufacturing industry. Thus, the appropriate utilisation of transformation
safety leadership could be a viable means of enhancing OSH performance in
the manufacturing sector.