Can youths engage their leaders? Assessing Nigerian youths’ capacity to demand accountability

Abstract

This paper examined the capacity of Nigerian youths in demanding accountability from their leaders for good governance. The study employed a descriptive survey design guided by two research questions. A total population of 235 final year students of Peaceland College of Education, Enugu in the Southern East region of Nigeria was used for the study. The instrument for data collection was a 23 items researcher developed questionnaire titled Youth Capacities for Accountability and Good Governance Questionnaire (YCAGGQ). It was structured in two clusters in-line with the two research questions that guided the study. The instrument was face validated by three experts in the Faculty of Education, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The reliability of the instrument was established using Cronbach Alpha Method which yielded an overall reliability co-efficient of 0.89. Data for the study was delivered and collected personally by the researchers with the help of two research assistants. Mean and Standard deviation scores were used in answering the two research questions. The result of the study revealed that both male and female undergraduate students identified all the items as factors that triggered the youths for demanding accountability from their leaders as well as workable ways for ensuring accountability from their leaders for good governance. This is evident in their mean scores which were above the cut-off point of 2.5 at a four point rating scale. The study among others recommended that: the government through its agencies should organize workshops on accountability and good governance on a frequent basis for the political leaders while in office to keep on grooming their minds on the issue of accountability and good governance. Equally, it was recommended that while expecting the government to be accountable, Nigerian youths should as well serve as agents of peace and unity, they should engage their leaders in a peaceful dialogue when necessary instead of protest as no meaningful development can take place in an environment dominated by chaos and violence.

Reviewing Editor:

• Robert Read, University of Lancaster, United Kingdom

Subjects:

• Counseling Techniques - Arts & Play Therapy
• Creative Arts & Expressive Therapies
• Education Policy & Politics
• Philosophy of Education
• Philosophy of Art & Aesthetics
• Music & Philosophy
• Language & Education

Introduction

Youths are the backbone of development of any given society. The role of youths’ in their various societies is enormous. This is based on the fact that youths, are future leaders and constitutes a core part of the society. The youths are expected to be the driving forces of politics and their contributions should be priceless in good governance. They should not only be politically aware, but also have a strong belief and right to voice their opinions on various public issues. With particular reference to the Nigerian society, Abe (2011) states that the protest of youths to End Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) in October, 2020 was the culmination of youths demand for good governance in Nigeria. The protest was a metaphor for their frustration with the high level of malfeasance, ineptitude and inefficiencies in government and governance. It was also their call for increased participation in policy agenda setting and decision making. Like in many developing countries, institutional weakness in Nigeria is the bane of youths’ poor participation in leadership which includes politics and governance and hence their apparent inability to demand for accountability from politicians and government officials.

Youths in Nigeria make up about 70% of the Nigerian population (Mbaji et al., 2019). This core group of 18-35 year olds has severally risen to the occasion in the past to voice out how national issues in the country affects them. For instance, the youths especially the children of the poor are the victims of the outcomes of poor educational system, poor judicial system and poor electoral process. The educational system of most developing countries has not helped the youths to develop their minds to challenge this status quo by deploying the latest approaches to science, technology, economics and politics. For instance, Nigerian youths find it difficult to challenge the dependence of the Judiciary and Legislature on the Executive arm of government – both at the Federal and State levels (Ezenwa & Igwilo, 2021). The above imbalance as expressed by the authors exists because the constitution of Nigeria confers enormous powers to the leaders and officials of the Federal Government (FG), followed by those of the State Government (SG) and the Local Government (LG). The Executive controls funding for these other arms of government in order to be able to influence the outcome of electoral processes that keeps them in power (Malena & Singh, 2004).

Thus, the electoral processes in most cases are neither free, fair nor credible. Furthermore, the Executive arm uses some youths (hoodlums) to perpetrate fraud and electoral injustice. They pitch these youths against their civil-minded counterparts who seek justice and fairness in governance (Qasam, 2013). Another option for the Executive is to deploy the military (of youth age) to crackdown on protesters who seek justice (Henze, 2015). In effect, the Executive makes or invokes policies that emasculate youths and prevent them from influencing legislations that strengthen government institutions. Thus, the politicians in Nigeria like in other undeveloped democracies prevent the process or prevailing of tested democratic means by ensuring that the youth lack legal, financial and technical disposition to challenge them (Qasam, 2013; Masarurwa et al., 2018). Consequently, youths resort to protests which often fail to yield good governance in the long term, as is observed in the case of the Arab Spring and related youth uprisings.

Nigeria ranks high in the foregoing conditions. Ogbeidi (2012) relates that since Nigeria became a democratic nation in 1999, youths’ engagement with the government have been less than successful. As earlier stated, youths are violently repressed when they protest against the leadership. Their persistence in demanding accountability has morphed to insurrections and insurgencies. For instance, The Niger Delta militancy emanated as a result of youths’ hunt for resource control in their region. Nnamani and Ayogu (2011) submitted that the region bears the bulk of the nation’s oil wealth yet; it is faced with serious environmental degradation resulting from oil spillage and gas flaring, forcing the people to live in abject poverty. The agitation for a stake in the accountability of their oil wealth and more developmental projects as well as employment opportunities for the youths instigated them to take up arms hence, causing total confusion, chaos and disorderliness in the nation. The threats of Niger Delta militancy seem to be a forgotten issue and at the moment, the most current youth agitation movements in the Eastern and Northern regions of Nigeria are known as the indigenous people of Biafra (IPOB) and the Boko Haram insurgencies. These insurgent groups are dominated by all categories of youths (schooled, unschooled, in-school and out-of-school). Their common mandate is to fight official corruption of Nigerian leaders for good governance and accountability.

It is of utmost importance that governments should put youth audiences at the heart of their government strategy and initiatives. As opined by Zumbe (2020), this great army of young people is aware of their power to influence good governance and accountability. Youths should be given a platform to express this power, to push for an improvement in the quality of lives and livelihoods and a reduction of corruption in society. These should serve as avenues to increase transparency, accountability and integrity, whilst building stronger relationships between government and citizens allowing them to participate in policy-making which is the bane of democracy. To this end, this work is set to ascertain the capacities of the youths for demanding accountability from their leaders.

Research questions

The following research questions guided the study:

1. What are the factors that triggered the youths for demanding accountability from their leaders?

2. What are the workable ways for ensuring accountability from leaders for good governance?

Concept of accountability

Accountability is all encompassing as it refers to a phenomenon, process, as well as an ideology. It depicts consciousness and expressions of responsibility of a leader to a follower. UNDP (2012) simply contextualizes the mechanisms of accountability in public administration to require “answerability” - the obligation of public officials to inform and explain what they are doing, and “enforcement” – the ability to impose sanctions on those who violate their mandate. This is the summary of “checks and balances”. Malena and Singh (2004) extend the definition of accountability as the obligation of power-holders to account for or take responsibility for their actions. Power - holders refers to those who hold political, financial or other forms of power and include officials in government, private corporations, international financial institutions and civil society organizations. The report further states there are two basic types of accountability: Vertical accountability - where citizens vote out undesirable governments and vote in desired ones and at the level of the government. Another type of accountability is the horizontal accountability. This is concerned with the extent to which institutions can check and balance the activities of public and political office holders. This implies that even free and fair elections in the vertical accountability do not suffice for good governance. Thus both vertical and horizontal accountability are not enough to account for effective and efficient public finance that are people-oriented and intended. To this effect, there is need for direct participation of citizens in the accountability process. Citizen participation in the horizontal and vertical accountability is known as Diagonal Accountability or Social Accountability (UNDP, 2012).

Equally, Malena and Singh (2004) define social accountability as an approach toward building accountability that relies on civic engagement, in which ordinary citizens or civil society organizations can participate directly or indirectly in exacting accountability. In a public sector context, social accountability refers to a broad range of actions and mechanisms that citizens, communities, independent media and civil society organizations can use to hold public officials and public servants accountable. These include, among others, participatory budgeting, public expenditure tracking, monitoring of public service delivery, investigative journalism, public commissions and citizen advisory boards. These citizen-driven accountability measures complement and reinforce conventional mechanisms of accountability such as political checks and balances, accounting and auditing systems, administrative rules and legal procedures. In effect social accountability is a demand, citizen-driven approach and hence a bottom-up approach to hold the government and public office holders accountable to ensure that common good ethics take place in all spheres of human endeavor.

In addition, Restless Development (2016) submits that other actors are also necessary to galvanize social accountability. This includes the media, private sector businesses, local and international donors. They also argue that social accountability has the fundamental principle that duty-bearers (public officials and service providers) are accountable to rights-holders (citizens). The latter will need some tested tools to generate evidence for social accountability. They further conclude that tools of social accountability, can be deployed at all levels of government, from local to national and in diverse domains or processes of governance which include: public information-sharing, policy-making and planning; the analysis and tracking of public budgets, expenditures and procurement processes; the participatory monitoring and evaluation of public service delivery, as well as broader oversight roles, anti-corruption measures and complaints handling mechanisms.

However, as expressed by Herbst and Gilberds (2017), one huge challenge of using the tools and possibly holding the government accountable is the absence of personnel willingness to do so. The call for the youths to hold their leaders accountable have recently gained currency since the latter part of the 20^th century and the beginning of the 21^st century. Momentum (2021) argues that citizens’ inability to hold government and her institutions accountable contributed to a large degree in most developing countries failure to realize the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) by the end of 2015. The report predicts that non-inclusion of youths will likely influence the failure to realize the SDGs by 2030 (Davis et al., 2014).

Youths’ inability to engage the government often led to frustration and violent self-help as a form of public pressure .But this approach is often not sustainable (Iwilade, 2013). Most governments of developing countries clamp down violently on youths when they choose to protest or demonstrate in the streets. It is nonetheless difficult for these governments to engage the youths openly. Despite this the OECD (2019) has developed guidelines for governments to engage the youth. This is possibly in anticipation of change in government disposition to the youths in this age of rapid globalization occasioned by High Speed Internet. Many more youths are aware of what to expect from their government based on what other (better) governments may be doing.

Equally, Avis (2015) broadly categorizes social accountability in terms of informal and formal rewards and sanctions that can motivate actions and accountability. They state that to elicit these actions depends on factors that include the nature and purpose of the social accountability initiative; whether compliance is forthcoming; the expertise and means of those seeking accountability; and the availability of formal means of enforcement. They further argue that Informal mechanisms of reward or sanction usually rely upon creating public pressure, for example, through (positive or negative) press releases, media coverage, public displays of support or protest, “interface” meetings between citizens and public officials, petitions among others. To elicit formal accountability will require presenting (hard) evidence to a corruption control agency, appealing to a public ombudsman or filing a legal claim through the court system. And they conclude the formal mechanism is fraught with the challenges of ineffectiveness or politicization as citizens may not agree on modes of law enforcements.

The extents of the foregoing determine the potential impacts of social accountability. It is however, common knowledge that social accountability is more effective in the developed countries where both formal and informal approaches are deployed. In the developing countries, especially African countries, the converse has been the case. However, there are attempts to introduce social accountability mechanisms in several African countries. Herbst and Gilberds (2017) conducted a social accountability experiment in Liberia. They conducted what can be considered a ‘readiness assessment’ of politicians and public officers to be held accountable by the youths and Chief Security Officers (CSO). Some prominent youths who acted as social innovators and dubbed “accountapreneurs” were used to boldly question stance of these officials and officers on social and political changes desired by the masses. Their findings showed significant unwillingness of these officials to account to the masses.

Youths, accountability and leadership

Most of the literature on social accountability favors increased participation of the youths. Many literatures on social accountability suggest that youths are required to demand accountability and in fact, lead the process (Restless Development, 2016; OECD, 2019). With youths setting the agenda with their capacity to demand accountability sets the stage for their participation in governance and ultimately leadership. UNDP (2013) notes that the first point for youths to demand accountability is in the electoral process. Thus, youths must participate actively in the electoral cycle by determining how credible and respectable persons are voted for and themselves, being credible enough to vie for positions. Unfortunately, in most of the developing countries, youths between 15 – 25 years have been constrained to apathy to politics (Momentum, 2021). Most of the uneducated youths are used as hoodlums and thugs to commit electoral malpractices and the fewer educated ones are either cowed to protesting weakly or succumb to the inefficiencies of the state (Egbefo, 2015). This is converse to the situation in developed countries. UNDP (2013) observes for instance, that European countries formulate and implement policies and platforms (organization membership) that favour participation of the youths. The report further notes that in spite of this, youths who are older, and belong to political organizations and are male are more likely to vote and participate in governance.

Equally, Momentum (2021) observes that the complexity of developing economies may necessitate social accountability to be conducted at sectoral levels. For instance, the report observes the findings of youths’ assessing the impact of healthcare funds in Mali. Using Landscape Analyses, they found little evidence of successful and sustainable youth involvement in the desire of the leaders to get the youths involved in governance. The analyses indicated that the government lacked the skills or capacity to effectively communicate or engage the youths and the youths likewise, had never been taught to demand accountability from the government thereby lacking negotiation skills. Similarly, UNICEF (2018) supported youths-led Social Accountability Project in Burkina Faso. Youths in collaboration with parents figured out that training, and retaining good teachers was a better priority than delivering school supplies. These youths were also involved in prioritizing other services: public security, management and maintenance of infrastructure, sanitation and hygiene. To this effect, their prioritization necessitated the budget provisions per service sector.

However, youths in some Latin American countries have attempted some formal approaches to demand accountability. Malena and Singh (2004) reports that the youths in Argentina were involved, at the municipal level to participate in the Budget Process. The Municipal selected 1000 youths and formed them as a CSO for effective coordination which in turn will guide them to prioritize issues to be budgeted. Participatory Budgeting (PB) - one of the major Social Accountability Tools (SAT) was first experimented in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Its success necessitates its publicizing or popularizing the PB as one of the most standardized tools of social accountability to be deployed in other developing countries. The challenge however remains the possibilities of youths to be galvanized and capacitated to use the SATs. The SATs may be considered formal tools because of the needs to generate and demand data for accountability. Avis (2015) and Masarurwa et al. (2018) opine that rather than consider only structured inclusion of youths in governance, youths can also hold government accountable informally. This approach is based on informal education or entertainment or both (edutainment).

In Nigeria, CSOs’ demand for accountability has been huge and significant. There are anecdotes that some of the CSOs have been taught to use the SATs. What remains unclear is the evidence of their successful deployment if any. Like what obtains in the European countries, the voice of the youths in Nigeria may be more articulated in the CSOs through formal organizational membership (Iwilade, 2013). However, Abe (2011) argues that some of the youth groups in the civil society space are either hijacked by government or infiltrated such that both categories of youth groups often do the bidding of the government. These groups of youths are bribed into perpetuating the corruption it set out to fight.

In addition, Egbefo (2015) observes further that majority of the youths do not belong to any formal groups. The voices of these youths are often not heard – or the government chooses not to ‘hear’ them. Some of these youths resort to crime and criminality; while others resort to uncoordinated and sometimes violent demonstrations that justify the clamp down of law enforcement officers. To this effect, it appears that youths’ participation in governance of Nigeria is abysmal and likely to be so in the near future. This is in spite of the fact that Nigerian youths are known to be very smart and creative as evidenced in diverse sectors of the global economy. This study therefore assesses Nigerian youths’ capacity to hold the government accountable and their potentials to contribute to good governance and leadership.

Materials and methods

The study adopted a descriptive survey design. The respondents were all the 235 final year students of Peaceland College of Education, Enugu in Southern Nigeria. The instrument for data collection was a researcher developed questionnaire titled Youth Capacities for Accountability and Good Governance Questionnaire (YCAGGQ). The questionnaire instrument consists of two sections: Sections A and B. Section A comprises information regarding the demographic data of the respondents while section B contains 23 items built on two clusters namely; cluster A and B. Cluster A comprises 13 items on the factors that triggered the youths for demanding accountability from their leaders and Cluster B comprises 10 items on the workable ways for ensuring accountability from leaders for good governance making a total number of 23 items structured in-line with the two research questions. The instrument was developed in line with the research questions and structured on a four point rating scale with the following response modes for cluster A, B, C, D and E; Strongly Agree (SA), Agree (A), Disagree (D) and Strongly Disagree (SD) with weight scores of SA= 4 points, A = 3 points, D = 2 points and SD= 1 point. The instrument was face validated by three experts in the Faculty of Education, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The suggestions and corrections made by the experts independently were incorporated into the final draft of the instrument. The reliability of the instrument was established using Crombach Alpha Method. The researchers administered the questionnaire on 20 undergraduate students from the University of Nigeria Nsukka. An overall reliability co-efficient of 0.89 was obtained indicating that the instrument is reliable. Data for the study was delivered and collected personally by the researchers with the help of two research assistants. Mean and Standard deviation scores were used in answering the two research questions. The scores on the table are survey responses from the respondents. The cutoff point was capped at 2.50 and above while below 2.50 indicates disagree.

Research question 1

What are the factors that triggered the youths for demanding accountability from their leaders?

Data on Table 1 reveals that youths specifically male and female undergraduate students agreed to all the thirteen items as factors that triggered the youths for demanding accountability from their leaders. This is evident in the mean scores of the respondents which are above the cut-off point of 2.5 at four point rating scale. Equally, the scores of the corresponding standard deviations are small ranging between 0.40 - 0. 64. This is an empirical evidence that the responses of the respondents which are noticeable in their mean scores are not far from each other.

Table 1. Mean scores and standard deviations male and female students on the factors that triggered the youths for demanding accountability from their leaders.

		Male Students			Female Students
S/N	Items	MEAN	Std. Dev	DL	MEAN	Std. Dev	DL
1.	Incessant strike actions in educational sector	3.34	0.48	A	3.35	0.44	A
2	Exorbitant school fees	3.65	0.46	SA	3.64	0.48	SA
3	Electoral injustice	3.55	0.49	SA	3.57	0.47	SA
4	Bad leadership precedents/impunity	3.40	0.49	A	3.38	0.45	A
5	Pervasive corruption	3.22	0. 54	A	3.26	0.52	A
6	Police brutality	3.58	0.44	SA	3.55	0.45	SA
7	Use of hoodlums to perpetrate fraud	3.29	0. 64	A	3.31	0.63	A
8	Deployment of military to crackdown protestants (youths) who seek justice	2.65	0.47	A	2.64	0.48	A
9	Lack of national integration	2.74	0.43	A	2.75	0.42	A
10	Poor judicial system.	3.34	0.47	A	3.35	0.48	A
11	Lack of reforms in public institutions	3.33	0.47	A	3.35	0.48	A
12	Poor infrastructures	3.20	0.40	A	3.24	0.42	A
13	Lack of employment opportunities for the youths	2.50	0.50	A	2.54	0.52	A
	Cluster Mean	3.20	0.48	A	3.22	0.46	A

Key: STD DEV = Standard Deviation, DL = Decision Level, A = Agree, SA = Strongly Agree.

Question 2

What are the workable ways for ensuring accountability from leaders for good governance?

The results in Table 2 indicates that male and female undergraduate students identified all the items from numbers 14 - 23 as workable ways for ensuring accountability from leaders for good governance. This is well indicated in their mean scores which is above the cut-off point of 2.5 at four point rating scale. The standard deviations of the scores generated in all the items are small indicating that the variations of the scores from the mean are not far from each other.

Table 2. Mean scores and standard deviations male and female students on the workable ways for ensuring accountability from leaders for good governance.

		Male Students			Female Students
S/N	Items	MEAN	Std. Dev	DL	MEAN	Std. Dev	DL
14	Provision of a comprehensive database system of citizens to deter culprits.	3.48	0.52	A	3.52	0.50	A
15	Conducting free and fair election to elect corrupt free leaders	3.47	0.77	A	3.40	0.87	A
16	Inclusion of educated youths in politics	3.70	0.43	SA	3.74	0.42	SA
17	Ensuring global partnership for development	3.34	0.48	A	3.35	0.44	A
18	Ensuring environmental sustainability	3.65	0. 44	SA	3.64	0.46	SA
19	Provision of employment opportunities for the youths	3.74	0.43	A	3.75	0.41	SA
20	Reforms in public institutions	3.60	0.49	SA	3.59	0.51	SA
21	Mobilization for national integration, to instill the sense of patriotism in the citizens.	3.50	0. 52	SA	3.52	0.50	SA
22	Adequate funding of educational sector	3.64	0.46	SA	3.62	0.42	SA
23	Good judicial system.
	Cluster Mean	3.56	0.52	SA	3.57	0.50	SA

Key: STD DEV = Standard Deviation, DL = Decision Level, A = Agree, SA = Strongly Agree.

Discussion of findings

The research questions that guided this study focused on the capacities of the youths for demanding accountability from their leaders. The result of the findings in Table 1 showed that both male and female undergraduate students agreed that all the items are the factors that triggered the youths for demanding accountability from their leaders. This includes incessant strike actions in the educational sector, exorbitant school fees, electoral injustice, bad leadership precedents/impunity, pervasive corruption, police brutality and others. This finding agrees with the postulations of Omoju and Abraham (2014) who categorized unemployment and underemployment, erratic power supply, infrastructural gaps, insufficient social amenities, poor healthcare services, lack of access to quality education and the threat posed by violent extremism as factors that triggered the Nigerian youths for demanding accountability from their leaders. Corroborating this view, Egbefo (2015) relates that the use of hoodlums to perpetrate fraud and police brutality were some of the factors that triggered the Nigerian youths for demanding accountability from their leaders. As explained by the author, the youth mass civil protest against Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) in 2020 was an outcome of prolonged and continuous police acts of torture, intimidation and extrajudicial killings of Nigerians and more especially the youths.

On the findings on workable ways for ensuring accountability from leaders for good governance, both respondents identified all the items as workable ways for ensuring accountability from leaders for good governance. Some of these ways include provision of a comprehensive database system of citizens to deter culprits, provision of employment opportunities for the youths, conducting free and fair election to elect corrupt free leaders among others. This finding is in line with the earlier assertion of Odeh (2015) who stated that one of the criteria to access accountability and good governance in a democratic system is the way and manner in which elections are conducted. This assertion is bankable going by the fact that ill-conducted elections cannot produce accountable governments.

Recommendations

Based on the findings of the study, the following recommendations were made:

• The government through its agencies should organize workshops on accountability and good governance on frequent basis for the political leaders while in office to keep on grooming their minds on the issue of accountability and good governance.

• The government should embark on mass mobilization of her citizens for national integration. This will instill the sense of patriotism in the Nigerian citizens and as well, go a long way to curb the menace of corruption, as all Nigerians will be united in condemning cases of corruption at whatever level.

• The government through the body that is responsible for the conduct of election should ensure that elections should be conducted in a way that is transparent and fair so that people-desired candidates will emerge as winners. This is necessary in that election is the foundation of every democracy and if wrongly conducted; there will be no way for good governance and accountability.

• The government should incorporate the youths into governance, economic and any decision for the development of the country. They youths in the country should be allowed to express themselves and have the right to voice their opinion on various public issues.

• The government should make provision for comprehensive database system of her citizens. This will go a long way in helping investigations as well as deter the culprits.

• Political leaders should not see political offices as a place to accumulate wealth for themselves and their families. With this mindset, they should not see government appointment as their turn to eat the national cake and to siphon cash meant for the development of the society for their personal development.

• The judicial system should be strengthened and the rule of law entrenched. There cannot be progress in the fight against corruption as long as there is so much impunity and injustice in the system, with many seemingly operating above the law.

• While expecting the government to be accountable, Nigerian youths should also serve as agents of peace and unity, they should engage their leaders in a peaceful dialogue when necessary instead of protest as no meaningful development can happen in an environment dominated by chaos and violence.

Conclusion

The commitment of leadership to good governance and accountability is vital to the growth and development of any nation, Nigeria inclusive. Thus, one of the major explanations for the failure of all development programmes in Nigeria has been the absence of effective accountability and transparency that would ensure good governance. Consequently, a sustained culture of accountability and transparency will help Nigeria to consolidate its democratic gains and ensure good governance. It will also help to re-integrate Nigeria into the mainstream of global economy and position her for other international opportunities. Above all, it will rebuild goodwill, sanitize the domestic investment climate, and encourage international investors for national development and employment opportunities. This is necessary as there is no substitute for good governance and accountable leadership.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Isaac N. Mbaji

Isaac Nnamdi Mbaji, is a lecturer in the department of educational foundations, university of Nigeria, Nsukka. He holds Master’s and Doctorate degrees in Philosophy of Education and teaches both undergraduates and postgraduates students. He has published many scholarly articles in both national and internal journals. Dr. Mbaji is a registered and an active member of both Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) and the Philosophers of Education Association of Nigeria (PEAN). His current research interest spans through the philosophy of the mind, critical thinking and creativity, peaceful coexistence, conflict and conflicts resolutions, national understanding and integration among others.