Influence of Sexual Violence on Academic Achievement of University Female Students in North-East Nigeria

Abstract

In the school setting and among university students, there is a need to ascertain the level of occurrence of sexual violence and by extension its influence on the academic achievement of students. Thus this study examined the influence of sexual violence on academic achievement of female university students in northeastern states of Nigeria. To achieve the objectives of this study, three research questions and hypotheses guided the study and descriptive research design was employed while 345 sample size was selected using Taro Yamane formula. Researcher-developed questionnaire was used for data collection, which yielded 0.82% reliability coefficient with the aid of Cronbach Alpha analysis. The data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer research questions while Chi-square analysis was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed a significant influence of sexual violence on the physical health of female university students; significant influence of sexual violence on mental health of female university students as well as significant influence of sexual violence on economic stability of female university students in North Eastern States of Nigeria. It was therefore concluded that sexual violence affects academic achievement of female university students in the North Eastern States of Nigeria as the victims suffer degrees of abuse ranging from physical, emotional and economic instability to smoothly run their academic programmes. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that the management of universities in Nigeria should beef up security apparatus on campus to forestall sexual harassment among students; and that the school management, academic and non-academic staff in the university should preach against quick money syndrome and practice of prostitution among male and female students respectively. The prevalence of Yahoo-Yahoo among males is on the increase while female students turn hostels and campuses to the venue for prostitution profession, thereby making them unserious elements and end-up with poor academic achievement.