Religious Affiliation and Human Rights Violation In Student Personnel Administration In Secondary Schools In Cross River State-Nigeria

The study evaluates religious affiliation and human rights violation in student personnel administration in Secondary Schools in Cross River State, Nigeria against the background of observed human rights violations in the administration of Secondary Schools in Cross River State. Using one null hypothesis with religious affiliation as the independent variable and human rights violation as dependent variable. The hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance. The independent variable was operationalized into three dimensions of Catholics, Pentecostal and others. The ex-post facto design was used in the study. From a population of 2130 Senior Secondary Three students in the Cross River State public Secondary School system, 1000 of them randomly selected from 50 schools were sampled for the study. A 38-item Students Legal Rights Protection Questionnaire (SLRPQ) was constructed by the researchers. It was face-validated and the reliability coefficient ranged between 0.79-0.90. The questionnaire was thereafter administered to Senior Secondary Three students’. One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used in analyzing the data coupled with a post-hoc analysis in the form of Fisher’s Least Significance Difference (LSD) multiple comparison analysis of the differentiated levels of students’ human rights violation on the basis of religious affiliation. The result showed that Catholics tended to experience significant violation of their rights to fair hearing freedom of thought/association, and freedom from discrimination than Pentecostals and others. Key words: Students’ religious believes and affiliation, students’ personnel management, human rights and freedom