The Environmental Education of Adolescents: A Solution for Sanitation Problems in Ibadan Municipality

Abstract

Environmental sanitation problems are a bane in cities in developing countries caused by poor sanitation behavior of individuals, particularly adolescents. Several recommendations have been made to effectively curb the menace, one of which is environmental education. The impact of education especially among adolescents who are forming lifelong behaviors is however not adequately documented. This study is a quasi-experimental research designed to fill this gap toward ameliorating sanitation problems in the city. From six schools selected in the municipality, 185 adolescents were selected from both public- and private-owned secondary schools in Ibadan, Nigeria, using multistage sampling. Information was collected through a structured questionnaire administered to the sampled adolescents before and after eight weeks of an environmental education intervention. The study revealed that the intervention significantly improved the adolescents’ environmental sanitation knowledge and behavior. The study concludes that environmental education has to be efficiently incorporated into learning process to curb the ever-present sanitation problems effectively.