Gap in knowledge and dating violence in South-Western Nigeria Tertiary institutions: implications for peace education

Abstract

This paper examines peace education as a means of curbing gap in knowledge and dating violence in South-western Nigeria tertiary institutions. Economic problems also exert enormous pressures on students making them violent or docile in the face of social 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 was significant relationship between students involve in peace education and rate of curbing gap in knowledge and dating violence. It also established that there is no significant relationship between students enlightened to participate in peace education and rate of curbing gap in knowledge and dating violence. The study revealed that there was significant relationship between executing peace education programme and rate of curbing gap in knowledge and dating violence. It was, therefore, recommended that, Nigeria tertiary institutions should adopts and strengthens 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: Gap in knowledge, dating violence, tertiary institutions, peace, education, Nigeria