EFFECTS OF ETHNO-RELIGIOUS CONFLICTS ON EDUCATIONAL COVERAGE IN KADUNA STATE: IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF KADUNA STATE

For several decades now Kaduna State has been witnessing an upsurge in ethno-religious conflicts.Ethno-religious conflicts in Kaduna State have created instability and insecurity of the citizens and has remained a constant threat to educational coverage in the State. Other studies has been conducted on the effect of these conflicts on the socio-economic development of the state in general. However, the extent of its effect on educational coverage which is one of the indicators for assessing socio-economic development is vague. Thus, the need to conduct the study. The research used structured questionnaires and existing data to collect the data for analysis. The data were collected from a sample of 400 respondents purposively drawn from Heads of schools in the public primary schools in the three senatorial districts of Kaduna State. An analysis of the collected data revealed that the trend of enrolment has been progressive in the Central Kaduna District and stable in the Northern Kaduna District but regressive in the Southern Kaduna District. It revealed that the spite of ethno-religious conflicts occasioned the trend to an extent. As the Southern Kaduna Districts has had more of the conflicts in the recent times compare to the other districts. The hypothesis that there no significant differences in the Gross Enrolment Rate, Net Enrolment Rate, Gross Intake Ratio, Net Intake Rate and Completion Rate of public primary schools in the Senatorial Districts in Kaduna State was rejected. The study goes to indicate that the conflict to the extent it has affected Kaduna State educational coverage is significant as 8 out of the 23 LGAs education coverage were affected. It is recommended that the State government should increase its security presence in the Southern Kaduna to give assurance to pupils and parents to attend and allow their wards to attend school. The various panel’s whitepaper recommendations on the various ethno-religious conflicts in the State should be implemented in full without any form of politicization, so as to curb the incidence of recurring conflicts and crisis in the State, among others.