Securing Girl-child Secondary Education for Sustainable National Security: Focus on North Western Nigeria (Published)
Secondary schools, schools for the adolescents, are often place where intolerance, discrimination and violence exist, and girls are mostly at the receiving end. In this paper the concept of girl-child, security challenge, secondary school and sustainable national security were clarified. The paper also identified the types of security challenges in Nigeria which include bombings and killings, kidnapping and armed robbery attack, political and economic related assassinations. Security challenges identified to be affecting girl-child secondary education in North Western Nigeria include kidnapping and abduction, bullying and intimidations, sexual abuse and harassment, physical threats and insults. Some factors promoting security challenges in secondary schools include distance, poor facilities, lack of community cooperation, and leadership attitude to security issue. The paper identified ways of securing girl-child education to promote sustainable national security as provision of security fence, provision of security outfit, provision of school bus, installation of CCTV cameras, and taking serious legal action against girl-child abuse related cases. The paper suggested that, like financial institutions, secondary schools should be provided with enough security personnel. It also suggested that community should be fully enlighten and involved in providing security for secondary schools especially the girls’ schools.
Keywords: Girl Child, Secondary School, sustainable national security
Influence of Abused by family Members on Moral and Marital Status of a Girl-child in Cross River State, Nigeria (Published)
This study explored the current status of girl-child abused by family members and to see possible influences on their moral and marital status. The design adopted for this study is a descriptive survey research design. The population of the study comprises of 51,197 secondary school students who enrolled in 2018/2019 academic session in all the public senior secondary schools in in Cross River State. A sample of 381 respondents was selected for this study based on the Krejcie and Morgan (1970) sample table of specification. The proportionate random sampling procedure was used in selecting the students from different secondary schools to cut across relatively the population. The instrument for data collection titled: Girl Child Abuse Questionnaire (GCAQ). The GCAQ is a 30-item instrument designed along a four-point Likert scale. The questionnaire was validated by consulting experts and items that were considered to be vague and irrelevant were removed to ensure validity. To establish the reliability of the instrument, a pilot test was conducted. Using the test retest method of reliability, the two sets of scores obtained from the pilot test were correlated using Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC). The reliability (r) value of 0.76 was obtained for the scores which implied the high reliability of the instrument. The data collected was analysed using descriptive statistics. The study found that girl-child in the study area is abused by family members and this in turn affects their moral and marital status. It was recommended among other that government through her agencies should ensure that girls are given adequate attention; stiffer punishment be given to the perpetrators of this ugly act.
Keywords: Abuse, Girl Child, Marital Status, moral status.