Dating Violence in South-Western Nigeria Tertiary Institutions: Implications for Peace Education

Abstract

This paper examined peace education as a means of curbing gap in knowledge and dating violence in South-western Nigeria tertiary institutions. Economic, social and psychological problems exert enormous pressures on students making them violent or docile in the face of challenges. These factors combine to make tertiary institutions hotbeds of deviant dating violence behavior with females mostly, but not exclusively, at the receiving end. The outcome of these may include a feeling of insecurity, particularly among female students thereby discouraging them from enrolling in higher institutions and further accentuating the skewed student population in favour of males. Descriptive survey research design was employed for the study. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 270  respondents. The main instrument used for data collection was self designed questionnaire. Data collected were analyzed using inferential statistics of Pearson product moment correlation. The findings revealed that there is significant relationship between students involve in peace education and reduction in dating violence. It also established that there is no significant relationship between students enlightened to participate in peace education and reduction in dating violence. The study further revealed that there is significant relationship between executing peace education and reducing dating violence. It is, thus, recommended that, Nigeria tertiary institutions should adopt and strengthen existing strategies of peace education, both formally and informally, to expand the opportunities of peace building and reduce the threats of dating violence in Nigerian tertiary institutions.

Keywords: Dating violence, tertiary institutions, peace education, South-western, Nigeria