A don in the Department of Adult Education, Faculty of Education, University of Ibadan (UI), Dr Abiola Adiat Omokhabi, has stressed the need for education stakeholders to incorporate some of the emergent phenomena in the Nigerian context into contemporary social welfare discourse and practice.
Omokhabi stated this while delivering the faculty lecture on the topic: ‘Navigating Beyond the Present Familiar Terrain: Emergent Phenomena in Social Welfare Discourse,’ held at the faculty’s lecture theatre recently.
The scholar averred that the phenomena are not only disturbing and threatening, but constitute dangerous dimensions that require critical policy and legal frameworks to curtail their spread.
The don identified prevalence of rape, rising cases of Gender Based Violence (GBV), paternity fraud scandals, phenomenon of single parenting, cybercrime, ‘Hookup’ as a new form of prostitution, insurgency, banditry, kidnapping, prevalence of contraceptive pills and abortion among female teenagers, prevalence of environmental degradation and climate change effect and digital technology application as well as rising cases of suicide which are common in recent years in Nigeria.
She expressed concern over the declining virtues and respect for the sanctity of human life in the country in recent years.
She added that moral decadence has become more pervasive and has replaced traditional core moral values in contemporary Nigerian society, saying that it is the root cause of these emergent phenomena.
Omokhabi called for the provision of social services, researches by scholars, social casework intervention, therapeutics intervention services, as well as the administration of social justice within the context of the pursuit of psychosocial well-being of individuals, families, groups and organisations in their respective communities.
“All these will enhance people’s capacity for social functioning, creation of favourable societal conditions, promotion of social change and development, social cohesion, empowerment and liberation of people as well as pursuit of social justice,” she said.
The scholar, however, recommended more informative studies and research on the emergent phenomena, revisiting the law by prescribing punishment for rape offenders, enactment of law criminalising paternity fraud, more rigid penalty for cybercrime offenders, development of guidelines for technology use in social work practice; awareness and sensitisation programmes for adolescents’ non-involvement in social vices and sensitisation of youths against suicide.
The faculty lecture was witnessed by notable scholars within and outside the university community.
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