The Wounds of Religious Violence and Terrorism in Nigeria: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Abstract

A quasi experimental study designed to establish the wounds of Religious violence and Terrorism in Nigeria: PTSD. 102 Nigerian military personnel participated in the study using accidental sampling technique, 85(83.33%) are males and 17(16.67%) females. 58(56.9%) are younger soldiers ages 19-37, 42(41.2%) are older soldiers ages 38-58, 77(75.49%) are married, 24(23.53%) singles and 1(0.98%) widower. Three hypotheses were tested; data was collected using Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Keane Scale (PKS). Result revealed that, there was a significant difference in PTSD scores, t=2.365, df=100, p=0.020(p<.05); with mean scores of 19.31 and 22.67 for soldiers that participated in peace keeping missions in Adamawa, Borno, Plateau and Yobe than those that did not participate respectively. There was no significant difference in scores on PTSD scale among soldiers who participated in more than one mission than those who participated once, t=0.809, df=49, p=0.422(p>.05); with PTSD mean scores of 18.63 and 20.08 for soldiers that had one mission and those that had more than one mission respectively. Older soldiers (38-58years) did not have a significant higher scores on PTSD than younger soldiers (19-37years) irrespective of missions attended, t=0.208, df=97, p=0.836 (p<.05); with PTSD mean scores of 20.28 and 21.20 for younger and older soldiers respectively.