GASPRO International Journal of Eminent Scholars

ABSTRACT

The study sought to assess the mitigating strategies to students’ abductions in Nigerian schools as a relief to school administrators’ security stress in Imo State. A descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The study was conducted in Imo State. The population of the study comprised security operators, principals, vice principals, and teachers. A stratified sampling technique was used to select 50 security operators, 20 principals, 40 vice principals, and 100 teachers, giving a total of 210 respondents used for the study. The instrument, titled "Mitigating Strategies to Students' Abduction and Security Stress Relief Questionnaire" (MSSASSRQ), was developed for the study. Validation of the instrument was carried out by an expert in test, measurement, and evaluation in Imo State University while the Cronbach Alpha technique was used to determine the level of reliability of the instrument. The reliability coefficient obtained was 0.72, which was proved high enough to justify the use of the instrument. The researcher subjected the data generated for this study to percentage analysis, used to answer the research questions, and simple regression analysis, used to test the hypothesis. The test for significance was done at 0.05 alpha levels. The study revealed that there is low levels of student abductions in Imo State and that unemployment, bad governance, lack of quality education or training, etc., contribute immensely to the abduction of students and are responsible for the general state of insecurity in Nigeria. Also, there are various strategies that help mitigate students’ abductions, including peace education, peace communications, information and computer technology. reinforced peace building, peaceful democratisation, improved social conditions, and the need to strengthen the judiciary for a rule of law regime. It was also observed that there is significant effect of the strategies adopted by Imo State government on school administrators’ security stress. One of the recommendations was that government and private educational institutions/schools should be equipped with adequate and effective counter-surveillance programs to help improve, strengthen, and increase their security and smoothen the teaching and learning environment.

KEYWORDS: Mitigation Strategies, Students Abduction, Nigeria Schools, Administrators and Security