A Professor of Development Psychology, University of Ibadan, Grace Adejuwon, has urged the government at all levels to increase social support for frustrated youths in the country.
Adejuwon said this while delivering the 494th University of Ibadan Inaugural lecture on Thursday, in Ibadan, Oyo State.
Newsmen report that the lecture is titled “Where Art Thou?”
The professor noted with concern that most Nigerian youths were frustrated because they were battling unemployment and poverty.
She said that the provision of employment opportunities would improve their psychological wellbeing and that it would nurture non-violent youths.
She enjoined President Muhammadu Buhari to adopt a non-violent approach to solving the increasing wave of youth violence across the country.
She noted that while it is good to invest in weaponry; the governors and the President need to adopt indigenous forms of conflict settlement and engage warring groups to de-escalate violence in the country.
“Cultures that do not provide non-violent alternatives for resolving conflicts appear to have higher rates of youth violence,” she said.
Adejuwon, however, said that her research findings on youth violence in Nigeria were brought about by growing “income inequality, rapid demographic changes in the youth population and urbanisation have all been positively linked with youth violence.
”Many missing links in the way Nigeria is organised and governed have to change; the government must urgently check the growing number of out-of-school children and substance abuse prevalent in the country.
“Many predictors of violent behaviour are predictors of other problems, such as substance abuse, delinquency, school dropout, and teenage pregnancy,” she said.
She also said that broken homes and poorly managed family conflicts had contributed to juvenile delinquency and initiation of many youths into violent gangs involved in armed banditry, kidnapping, and terrorism.
“Another factor in the parental conflict in early childhood is a low level of attachment between parents and children, for example, a mother who had her first child at an early age experiencing parental separation or divorced at a young age.
“Some other factors are low level of family cohesion, low socioeconomic status of the family.
“Associating with delinquent peers has also been linked to violence in young people as well as membership of a gang,” she said.
The Professor said “today, in Nigeria, more people are more likely being lost daily to brutal killings than recorded for the globally dreaded COVID-19.
“Perhaps, this tendency to derive benefit from causing harm to other people as expressed in kidnapping, banditry and ritual murders have been developed as externalising behaviour in childhood.
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“Externalising behaviour “acting out” may include physical aggression, non-compliance, verbal bullying, lying, under-controlled behaviour, disruptive behaviour, vandalism, defiance, theft and antisocial behaviour directed at others.
“Childhood externalising behaviour has been described as a behavioural problem that is a major risk factor for later juvenile delinquency, adult crime, and violence,” Adejuwon said.
