Sport Roles as Correlate of Development and Peace among Crisis-Communities Area in Nigeria

Abstract

Human beings are inseparable from conflicts. The intervention of sports in conflict resolved provide meaningful life of an early stage of young people who are usually being used causing problems, thereby reduced the risk of involvement in anti-social behaviour. A survey research was carried out of expo-facto design, with total sample of one thousand, seven hundred respondents from three senatorial districts of crisis region communities of South-Eastern zone, Nigeria. A structured validated questionnaire: Sports Roles for Development and Peace Inventory (SRDPI) contained two instruments: Sports Roles Questionnaire (SRQ) and Sports for Development and Peace Questionnaire (SDPQ) with reliability result obtained as .83 to .50 and all variables yielding 0.88. While the Sports for Development and Peace Questionnaire (SDPQ) result obtained was 0.76 of cronbrach alpha coefficient. Multiple regression analysis was used to analyze data collected for the two hypotheses at 0.05 significant level. The result shows that there was a relative contribution of each of the independent variables on the dependent. Character building variables contributed more than the other (57%) of the variance and nationalism through sports having the lowest contribution (10%). The result also shown that the joint effect of the variables on Sport for development and peace was significant (F _{(9, 1700)} = 177.913; R = .698 R² = .487, Adj. R² = 0.484: P < .05). Therefore, countries should endeavour to include sports and physical activities in their development policy and to promote initiatives to increase participation and access to sports, with particular emphasis on young people.

Keywords: Ethnicity, Ethnic conflict, Legacies, Polarization, Social entities

Ife PsychologIA, 20(2), September 2012