Teacher Education as Panacea to National Security Challenge: A Focus on Niger State as Investigated by Teachers on Training

Abstract

This paper attempts to examine the issue of teacher education and national security challenges, focusing on the insecurity situation in Niger state as one of the socio-economic forces that serve as constraints to peace, progress, and economic development. The present insecurity incidence in different parts of the state calls for urgent attention from both private and government organizations at all strata. The paper, therefore, discusses the concept of national security, the causes of insecurity, and its challenges. It also evaluates the importance of teacher education as the only panacea to insecurity in the state. Teacher education deserves to be encouraged and provided for students to pursue their constitutional right to be educated under normal
circumstances. It’s based on this that tertiary institutes such as Niger State College of Education Minna, Faculty of Education IBBU Lapai, and Faculty of Science Education and Technology FUT Minna were established around the state to crave for needed teacher education training, gender disparity and shortage of manpower in the field of teaching. Two thousand nine hundred and twenty-seven (2,927) Counselling psychology department undergraduates of Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University constitute the population of the study, out of which three hundred and forty six (346) were randomly and stratified drawn as a sample size for the research. The study employed a survey approach. Two research objectives were raised and corresponding research questions and hypotheses were formulated. The instrument used for the study is a selfdeveloped IBBU- Student Teacher Education Evaluation Questionnaire (I-STEEQ). Validity of I-STEEQ was obtained through face and logical validities, bearing in mind the curriculum of the teacher education (TE) programme. The reliability of I-STEEQ was sought through Cronbach’s alpha formula and coefficient indices for I-STEEQ 0.75. A reliability of stability 0.79 over time was obtained through test-retest method for I-STEEQ. The data collected and hypotheses were analyzed using the chi-square statistical tool. The findings indicate some measure of agreement on the level to which the programme objectives were achieved. Conclusions were arrived at and recommendations were made on the relevance of teacher education to the national security challenge in Niger State.