National Human Rights Commission, Citizenship Education and the Prospects of Citizens’ Rights Protection for Peace and Stability in Nigeria (Published)
Human rights are critical to sustainable livelihoods. This is why most states established human rights institutions to prevent the violations of rights by individuals and states. This paper explores the relevance and oversight functions of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in addressing Nigeria’s poor human rights protection complexities. The paper establishes the linkages between citizenship education and necessity for human rights protection with emphasis on the legal framework of the NHRC, the mechanisms for rights protection by the commission and the performance of the NHRC so far. The paper concludes that having people well informed about their duties as citizens of Nigeria, and the effectiveness of human rights monitoring would sustain the capacity of the state to reduce human rights abuses in the post-COVID-19 era, when individuals and governments are struggling to address development and economic challenges.
Keywords: Citizenship Education, Human Rights, NHRC, Nigeria
Cooperative Learning Method and Junior Secondary Students’ Attitude towards Citizenship Education in Social Studies in Rivers State, Nigeria (Published)
The study explored the effect of cooperative learning method on the Junior secondary students’ attitude towards citizenship education in social Studies Port Harcourt local Government area of Rivers State, Nigeria. The quasi-experimental design was adopted. A total of 240 students participated in the study. There were 120 students in the experimental and control groups respectively. A validated 10-item instrument titled Students Attitude towards Citizenship Education Scale (SATCES) was used for data collection. In order to establish the reliability of the instrument used in this research work, the test- retest method was used to obtain r = 0.82 as the reliability index of SATCES. Three research questions and two hypotheses guided the study. Line graph, mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions whereas paired sample t-test and ANCOVA were used to test the hypotheses at .05 alpha level. The findings were that cooperative learning method significantly influenced students attitudes towards citizenship education, there was a significant main effect of treatment on the students’ attitude towards citizenship education. The study recommended among others that teachers of social studies should always adopt CLM in the teaching of the subject for the enhancement of the attitudes of the students.
Keywords: Citizenship Education, Cooperative learning method, Social Studies, attitude, junior secondary students’