Factors Influencing Child Abuse among Yorubas in Ibadan Metropolis, Oyo State, Nigeria

Child abuse generically is human created or tolerated conditions to inhibit or preclude the development of inherent potentials of children. This study was carried out to investigate factors influencing child abuse among Yorubas in Ibadan metropolis.The descriptive survey research design of the ex-post facto type was adopted for this study. The accessible population for the study comprises all families mainly among the Yoruba tribe in six local government areas of Oyo state. The multi-stage sampling procedure was adopted for the study. A total of one hundred and fifty-six respondents (156) were used for the study. The study main instrument for the data collection was a self-structured questionnaire tagged ‘Factors Influencing Child Abuse Among Yorubas Scale’ (FICAYS)( r=0.69). The data collected were analysed using percentages and frequency counts for bio data, ANOVA (analysis of variance), multiple regression analysis and chisquare were utilized to answer the research questions. The findings show that socio-economic contributed to child abuse as most families agreed that low socio-economic status of families make them expose their children to street hawking .The F cal value of the four variables are 22.186 showing that age, education, marital status and income level contributed to child abuse among families in Yoruba land. The result shows that cultural factor has to a great extent contributed to child abuse among Yoruba families (x2 =89.9< 0.05). The data show that income β=0.443 contributed most to child abuse, followed by marital status β = .258; educational qualification β =.203 and age β =.128.The findings show that age, education, marital status and income level among Yoruba families influenced child abuse. Based on the findings, it was recommended that parents, guardians and teachers should take proper care towards the upbringing of the children .They should be responsible for their welfare. Child right education should be embraced in cultural practices by all and sundry and government should make and enforce law against harmful traditional, social and cultural practices that affect children’s live and development.