DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND ITS EFFECTS ON NATIONAL SECURITY

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background Of The Study

The menace of domestic violence on national security can never be over emphasis seeing to the fact that it’s a pattern of abusive behavior in a relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner (Office on Violence against Women 2015). An intimate partner may be a current or former married spouse, common-law or civil union spouse, domestic partner, boyfriend/girlfriend, dating partner, or ongoing sexual partner (Breiding, 2014).

Moreover, national security is commonly used to mean safety from danger and protection from internal, external attack or infiltration. This usage is tied on the apron string of defense and security forces. The cold war era gave the highest currency to the conventional security doctrine that rested on the assumption that only a strong military can effectively deter attacks and threats of force (Chris, 1997). On the contrary, John (1991) conceives security in terms of arms, armament and military personnel. He posits that security is the „relative freedom from harmful threat‟. In the post-cold war period, the concept of security has attracted a new thinking by contemporary scholars who condemned the militaristic thought of security insisting on the concepts of rehabilitation, transformation and expansion. (Booth, 1991) observed that „one of the themes of new thinking is the idea that security policy should have political accommodation as a primary aim, the adverse effects of identifying security almost exclusively with military strength was evident throughout the cold war.

Statement of the Problem

The problem of domestic violence in Nigerian society has become apparent over political and economic control of political positions and resources and these have a negative effect on national peace and security. In spite of the sanitization by government and local and international non governmental agencies against domestic violence more is expected to be done to assess the effect of domestic violence on national security. Based on the aforementioned, problem of this study is to make assessment of domestic violence and national security.

Objectives of the Study

The main study of the study is to investigate the effect of domestic violence on national security. Specifically, the study aimed at the following objectives:

1.  To examine the effect of different forms of domestic violence on national security.

2.  To examine the causes of domestic violence in Nigerian society.

3.  To examine factors militating against effective national security.

Research Questions

The research questions for the study were formulated as follows;

1.  How do different forms of domestic violence affect national security?

2.  What are the causes of domestic violence in Nigerian society?

3.  What are the factors militating against effective national security?

1.5    Research Hypotheses

The following hypotheses were formulated to guide the study.

1.  Different forms of domestic violence does not significantly influence national security.

2.  Causes of domestic violence does not significantly influence National security in Nigerian society.

3.  There is no significant influence of factors militating against effective national security.

1.6   Significance of the Study

The Study is significant in a number of ways. First, the study encourage citizens to admit the fact that when they get involve in domestic violence, this result in numerous number of crime related issues in the society. The study draws government, private individual and cooperate bodies to accept the fact that violence from home has a proportional effect on national security issues.

1.7    Delimitation of the Study

This study was delimitated to the effect of domestic violence and national security using Uyo local government area as study focus.

1.8    Limitation of the Study

It was also difficult to gather materials especially relevant and current information related to the study variables, since the study is not common. This caused scarcity of relevant research materials from local journals, the researcher had to rely greatly on the foreign materials in order to put up this work. Another difficulty faced was limited time given to researcher to complete the study. Limited fund was also a constraint to this work.

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