Don Decries Lack Of Data On Violence

A professor of Guidance and Counselling, Prof. Oyaziwo Aluede, has decried the absence of a national survey on the prevalence of violence in secondary and tertiary schools in the country.

Aluede said the lack of data or document had made it difficult for counsellors to appreciate the prevalence of violence in Nigerian schools.

He stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Tuesday at a two-day annual conference by the Counselling Association of Nigeria, Lagos State chapter.

According to Aluede, a lecturer at the Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Edo State, unlike in secondary and tertiary schools, violence was well documented at the basic primary education level.

Aluede quoted the World Health Organisation(WHO) as defining violence as the intentional use of physical force, threat or actual, against oneself, another person or a group that could result in injury, death, psychological harm, mal development or deprivation.

He said the Federal Ministry of Education defined school violence as gang activity, locker theft, bullying, intimidation, gun use and assault, which might be perpetrated against students, teachers and other members of staff.

“The Federal Ministry of Education (2007) reveals that violence in schools takes the forms of physical, psychological, sexual, gender and health-based violence.

“Physical violence accounts for 85 per cent; psychological, 50 per cent; gender-based, five per cent; sexual, four per cent; and health-related, one per cent,” he said.

Aluede stated that a survey conducted by educationists in some secondary schools in the country shows that almost four in every five participants had been bullied by their peers.

The don said that despite the lack of documented evidence in terms of independent research or institutional government-sponsored research, there had been studies on violence on campuses.

“There had been studies on campus cult whose activities take the form of physical and sexual abuses,” he said.