Social Justice and Social Work Curriculum at the University of Nigeria,Nsukka,Nigeria

Abstract

Purpose:

With increasing incidents of injustices in Nigeria, concerns for social justice have been topical. Social workers are expected to be at the fore of campaigns and implementation of social justice, hence, the question of their preparedness to match these expectations. This article sets out to ascertain whether the content of the curriculum of the Department of Social Work, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, meets these expectations.

Method:

Focus group discussion and in-depth interviews were used to collect data from purposively selected 20 undergraduates and four postgraduates.

Results:

Findings show that the students believe that the curriculum has enough social justice content though there is a need for review and change in delivery methods.

Discussion:

The incorporation of social justice into the curriculum encourages its application by practitioners. It is important to introduce more courses on social justice to impact more on the students and train teachers on better delivery methods.

Keywords

social worker social justice curriculum practitioner Nigeria

The human development index (HDI) scores reflect inequalities experienced by several countries across key developmental areas to include gender, education, health, and access to resources and opportunities (United Nations Development Programme, [UNDP], 2019b). Nigeria has serially ranked low in the computation, as it currently occupies 158 of about 190 countries, with a score of 0.534, where 1 is the perfect score (UNDP, 2019a). The implication is that Nigeria is faced with the challenge of diverse inequalities and social injustices in such issues as widowhood practices, girl-child marriage, female genital mutilation, noninclusive inheritance practices, discrimination against persons living with disabilities, to mention but few (Abara, 2012; Adeyemo, 2016; Etieyibo & Omiegbe, 2016; Nzewata, 2018).

Social justice does not exist in the absence of “social injustice.” Social justice includes ensuring that people’s rights are not denied, making sure they are allowed to participate in decision-making, and have equal access to opportunities in the society. On the other hand, social injustice entails when equals are treated unequally and the haves are given preferential treatment than the have-nots. It also involves unfair practices against the downtrodden in the society (Marsh, 2005; Tyler et al., 2019).

The social work profession is ever focused on challenging different forms of injustices and social conditions that impede people’s well-being and goal aspirations (O’Brien, 2010). Scholars have noted that social justice and equality are the primary and fundamental mission of the social work profession (Nicotera, 2019; Thompson, 2016). Thus, across the globe, social workers show great concern for those experiencing injustice in the society. According to Morgaine (2014), when social workers failed to understand what constitutes social justice, they lose touch with what they are supposed to do as professionals.

Social workers see justice as satisfying the rights and entitlements of individuals, groups, and communities based on the notion of equality, equity, access, and inclusion in the face of resources and opportunities (International Federation of Social Workers [IFSW], 2014). Social justice has become a major compromise for social workers. This is in line with the anti-oppressive framework of social work as expounded by many social work scholars (Burke & Harrison, 2002; Dominelli, 2002; Thompson, 2016). According to these scholars, the anti-oppressive practice seeks to understand and deal with the structural causes of social problems, address their consequences, and make social relations productive at micro, mezzo, and macro levels or personal, cultural, and structural levels. It also embodies a person-centered philosophy and an egalitarian value system that focuses on reducing the harmful and negative effects of structural inequalities and social hierarchies upon people’s lives (Anderson, 2010; Dominelli, 2002).

According to Bhuyan et al. (2017), one of the aims of a social work curriculum is to educate students to take action against multiple forms of oppression, so that they can in the future address structural inequalities that impact service users. IFSW (2014) and Teater (2010) believe that the key mandate of social work is to train social workers who can intervene to chart courses of liberation, empowerment, and justice. This cannot be achieved if social justice is not infused in the curriculum used for training social workers.

In Nigeria, the National Universities Commission (2007) mandates departments in all Nigerian universities to review their curriculum once every 5 years to accommodate changes in the society and immediate environment. As a result of this, the Department of Social Work, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, reviews its curriculum every 5 years bearing in mind our societal structure that creates social circumstances (barriers) that engender injustice, discrimination, and oppression of certain vulnerable members of the society (Okoli et al., 2017). This is, however, is not to say that our curriculum review is not influenced by the market values as noted by Bhuyan et al. (2017) to enable the students to secure employment after graduation and successfully integrate within the market system. It is important to note also that overall, the curriculum contains content on human rights and social justice that are consistent with those identified as core for social work education across the globe (International Association of Schools of Social Work, 2020).

Therefore, the question of the preparedness of the social workers to rise to these challenges against social justice begs to be addressed. This is because they will be useful in bridging the much-needed social justice gap which will go a long way, in contributing to the improvement of Nigeria’s HDI scores in the future, and ultimately scale up the pace of Nigeria toward achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. It is in this regard that our study hopes to investigate the perceived efficacy of the training curriculum of social workers in Nigeria’s University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

In Nigeria, despite the central role of knowledge of social justice in the education of social workers, very little research has been published concerning the perception of students on the commitment of the curriculum and social work education to the social justice agenda. Although there are very few schools teaching social work in Nigeria, not much has been done by way of evaluating the effectiveness or impact of the curriculum on social work practice generally or explore the adequacy of the content of the curriculum for various aspects of practice. This study, therefore, hopes to solicit input from social work undergraduate and postgraduate students from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, to assess their perception of the integration, promotion, and delivery of social justice content within their education and current social work practice.

Method

Study Area

The study area is the Department of Social Work at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The University is the first Nigerian indigenous university located in the country’s south-east geopolitical zone. The Social Work Unit was established in the year 1976 in the Department of Sociology/Anthropology. It became a department of its own in 2006. It shares the same general philosophy with the University which is: to restore the dignity of man. As of the 2019/2020 academic session, the department has a population of 545 students, comprising 422 undergraduates and 123 postgraduate students (UNN, Academic Planning Unit, 2019).

Sampling Procedure

Twenty-four respondents, comprising 20 undergraduates and four postgraduate students were selected purposively. Focus group discussion (FGD) and In-depth interviews (IDI) were used to ascertain if the courses contained in the curriculum had content on social justice and if the lecturers dwelt on the issue of social justice as they should when teaching. The rationale behind the use of FGD is that it will help promote active interaction among participants (Kitzinger, 1994). The researchers purposively selected third-year and final year students for the FGD because they have spent three to four years in the system, so they will be able to access if social justice is incorporated in the social work curriculum. Also, four postgraduate students who are practitioners were purposively selected to find out the challenges they are facing in their places of work in incorporating social justice into their practice. The Institutional Review Board University of Nigeria, Nsukka, approved the study instrument and sampling procedure (IRB00002336).

Data Collection

The discussions and the interviews were conducted in a classroom of the Department of Social Work and the office of the interviewees. The respondents for both the FGD and IDI first gave their oral consent and with the full knowledge of the aim of the research participated willingly. Two FGDs were conducted with undergraduates only. The first FGD was with the 10 third-year students, while the second was with 10 final-year students. The IDI was conducted with four postgraduate students only. The discussions and interviews were conducted between May and June 2019. Based on their permission, the discussions were recorded with the recording device, while a notetaker took notes during the discussions.

Data Analysis

The discussions and interviews (FGDs and IDIs) were audio-taped, one of the researchers facilitated the FGD and IDI sessions while the other researcher took notes. The data generated were transcribed verbatim into the English language by an expert in the Department of Linguistics of the university. The transcribed discussions and interviews were compared with the notes taken to ensure that no response was omitted. The researchers independently read and reread the transcripts to familiarize themselves with the data. As the researchers were going through the transcriptions, some recurrent and common themes were identified. Upon these identified recurrent and common themes, the final findings of this study were reported. Also, pseudonyms were used to identify the respondents during analysis.

Results

We begin presenting our results by first summarizing the demographic features of the participants. Second, we present views from participants about the social justice content of the curriculum, the instructor’s role in teaching social justice, the challenges encountered by practitioners in incorporating social justice into their practice, and suggestions for improvement.

Demographic Characteristics of the Respondents

The participants were made up of 20 undergraduates and four postgraduate students. Ten of the undergraduates were final year students, while the remaining 10 were third-year students. They were 10 males and 10 females, and their ages ranged from 19 to 24 years. The four postgraduate students who participated in the study were public servants made up of two males and two females with an average age of 37 years (see Table 1). All the participants were Christians. We included postgraduate students who are practicing so that they can share their practice experiences.

Table 1.

Summary of Sociodemographic Descriptions of Sampled Undergraduate and Postgraduate Students.

Variables	Postgraduate	Undergraduate	Total	%
Gender
Male	2	10	12	50
Female	2	10	12	50
Type of program
MSc	3	–	3	75
PhD	1	–	1	25
Year of study
Third year	–	10	10	50
Final year	–	10	10	50
Age
19–21	–	7	7	29.2
22–24	–	13	13	54.2
25+	4	–	4	16.6

Source: Field survey (2019).

Social Justice and Curriculum

All the participants noted that the curriculum contained courses with content on social justice. They listed the following courses: Social Work and law, Ethnocultural Relations and the Nigeria State, Field Practicum, Rural Social Work, Social Work and Gender, Social Work Intervention, Social Policy and Planning, Orphans and Vulnerable Children Services, Social Work Practice With Children, and Social Work Practice With Youth. Buttressing further on the social justice content of the courses, the participants gave some instances to support their point. A third-year student stated that “there is a course called social work and the law, this course in particular talks about legislations and policies and what social work can do to improve social justice in the society”(Adaobi).

A final year student stated:

…the course on rural social work points out a lot about the injustice being meted out to our women in rural areas, especially when they lose their husband, family members trying to collect properties from the woman and leaving her with nothing. (Collins)

Another participant who is equally in the final year notes that “one of our courses called Social work and Gender talks a lot about anti-discriminatory practices” (Charles). In supporting the views of their colleagues a final year students stated thus,

In our field practicum, you have to look at discrimination, you have to look at issues bothering around social justice and how you can create equity and fight for the oppressed and people who are being discriminated against. (Ifeanyi)

The postgraduate students were not left out in talking about the content of social justice in the courses they are being taught. According to one of them, “a course like Social Policy and Planning is all about looking for ways to develop policies and programs that will wipe out injustice and inequalities in our society” (Fred). Generally, the students were of the view that some of their courses have lots of content on social justice. They however noted that the main problem is with the delivery of the courses by lecturers.

The Instructor’s Role in Teaching Content With Social Justice

Many of the students were of the view that lecturers who teach the courses are the ones who will impact the social justice aspects of any course. According to one of the postgraduate students, “if one looks at the courses from their title, you will not know that such a course can promote social justice until the lecturer starts to teach with examples” (George). Therefore, one has to look beyond the course title to see how the course promotes social justice. Some of them went ahead to list some courses that when viewed from the perspective of the titles, one may not imagine how such courses can promote social justice.

A postgraduate student in an IDI had this to say:

Looking at some of the courses they taught us in social work from the broader perspectives of the titles, you might not really see how they promote social justice but in some courses, you will see where issues of oppression, discrimination, and social justice were discussed, but merely looking at the course title, you might not find it. Take, for instance, a course like social work intervention; when you look at social work intervention, you might just assume that it is all about how social workers helping individuals, families, and groups. However, going deeper into the course, you would have to look at oppression, discrimination, and some issues bothering around social justice and how you can create equity and fight for the oppressed and people who are being discriminated against. But all these to a large extent depend on the lecturer teaching the course. (Uche)

A final year undergraduate student also noted that:

In our course, Rural Social Work, the lecturer who taught us the course emphasized widowhood practices, female genital mutilation, early marriage, and lack of education for the girl-child and what social workers can do to stop these practices. If not for the lecturer, we will not see the social justice aspects. (Obinna)

Another final year student also stated that:

In the course called Ethnocultural Relations and the Nigeria State, we did not really see any societal injustice when we started doing the course until another lecturer took over and now emphasized anti-oppressive practices as she tried to unravel social injustice that is embedded in our society that ordinarily, we don’t see them as injustice. This new lecturer exposed us to a lot of social injustices that exist in Nigeria and then she tried to use Neil Thompson’s theory to give us the way forward on how we can ameliorate anti-oppressive practices in our different communities. So, having said this, it was really the lecturer that helped us to see the social justice parts. (Onyinye)

In all these narratives, the students were of the view that some of the courses had hidden content on social justice which only an informed teacher can impart on the students. For them therefore the lecturer teaching the course is the single most important factor that will introduce the content of social justice in any course.

Challenges of Inculcating Social Justice Into Practice in Nigeria

Some of the participants noted that the problem is not about having social justice content in the curriculum but putting it into practice outside the classroom. They noted that Nigerian society is structured in such a way that it is near impossible to make any change in the life of those suffering injustice. They noted that culture, lack of legal backing for the profession, and corruption were part of the problem affecting practice after graduation. For example, participants pointed out that religious beliefs are a serious challenge in bringing social justice into practice in Nigeria. One of the postgraduate students who practice in the northern part of Nigeria that is predominantly Muslims said:

Muslims believe in girl-child marriage. You will see a girl-child below 15 years getting married and giving birth to children. Is not just getting married, but the child may be marrying a man who is supposed to be her great grandfather. For instance the case of the former governor of Zamfara state who married a 13-year-old child and to them (Muslims), there is nothing wrong with it but as a social work practitioner I know it is not right as it amounts to child abuse with health problems attached, but there is nothing I can do about this because Islamic religion is fully in support of it. (Musa)

Some participants noted that certain aspects of Nigerian culture hinder social work practitioners from taking action against social injustices. The undergraduate students noted that during their field practicum, they encounter such cases. According to them, Nigerian culture sees women as subordinate and also denies them rights to various things such as rights of inheritance. The quote below by a third-year student captures their views:

In Nigerian society, it is believed that the man is the head of the family, so most of us grew up with the notion that a man is the head of the family who has all the authority. The woman is just the subordinate. But social work, in its effort to promote social justice, made us understand that marriage is a partnership and not a situation of superior and subordinate. As a social worker, when issues of husband and wife come to play in the social welfare agency where I did my field practicum, I found that culture did not allow us to do anything to help the woman. (Fidel)

A postgraduate student corroborated the above assertion:

In traditional Nigerian society, a woman is not entitled to own land nor had the right to inherit family property. I could remember the case of one of my clients after the demise of her husband, the husband siblings and the extended family took away all her husband’s properties from her, leaving nothing for her and her daughters just because she didn’t give birth to a male child. This left my client and the children vulnerable. The best I could do was to help her to get a lawyer to take the case to court. I know it is a violation of human rights but as a social worker whose responsibility is to promote social justice, there is little or nothing I could do about it because our culture is against female child inheritance of father’s properties especially among the Igbos where I practice. (Uche)

Currently, in Nigeria, there is no law backing social workers to practice, this, however, does not mean that there are no laws that enforce social justice or human rights. Social workers are not licensed and so they cannot use the law (police and the courts) to enforce social justice if the need arises as only lawyers can do that. This is why it is common in Nigeria to find that many Nongovernmental organizations that work in the area of social justice and government agencies that are concerned with social welfare and social justice employ more lawyers than social workers. The participants stated that most often, social workers find it difficult to stand up and challenge social injustice because of a lack of legal backing and no recognition. One of the postgraduate students during the IDI expressed his feelings thus,

One of my major challenges in practicing is that social work doesn’t have legal backing in Nigeria. When you as a social worker want to stand up and challenge social injustice, you will be making a fool of yourself because people will be like “what is this person saying” and will make jest of you. After all, no law can back you up. (Musa)

An undergraduate student added:

With no recognition and no legal backing, when you insist on certain things during our field practicum, the organization or agency where you are practicing will not stand up and support your position. Rather they will write to the school that you should stop coming for field practicum in their agency because you are a trouble maker. So instead of endangering yourself, you keep quiet. (Mercy)

Another postgraduate student also pointed out that the erroneous belief that anybody can practice social work has also affected practitioners in their pursuit of social justice. According to her,

Nigerians believe that anybody can practice or teach social work. Yes, I know there is an association of social workers in Nigeria, but the association is not effective. It is like a social club, and because everybody is a member, no rules or regulations are guiding who should be a member. Social workers in Nigeria who do not have professional status, find it impossible to fight social injustice in our society because your so-called colleagues do not know what you are talking about. (Fred)

Findings from the study also show the connection between corruption in Nigeria and the promotion of social justice by social work practitioners. Many of the participants believe that the level of corruption in Nigeria sometimes makes it difficult to insist on social justice during practice. A postgraduate student narrated the following:

I once had a client whose poor parents brought her to the agency because she was raped and became pregnant by the son of a rich man. I wanted to involve the police but my boss called the father of the young man on the phone informed him of the case, he went to the police and bribed his way through and my client was blamed for being wayward and wearing the wrong clothes. She couldn’t get justice because my boss and the police were all corrupt and I couldn’t do anything. (George)

An undergraduate student further commented, “This issue of corruption has a lot to do when it comes to social workers inculcating social justice into practice as we see it every day in our field practicum.” The student went ahead to narrate the story below:

In my agency, we were told to select some pupils to benefit from a scholarship fund instituted by a philanthropist. The students’ social workers wanted to use an equitable method of selection but the Headmistress and teachers selected their relatives only. It was so unfair but we could not do anything. (Collins)

Suggestions for Improvement

From the narratives above, it appears that some problematic areas will require some intervention if social justice is to be incorporated into the curriculum and practice. The participants suggested the need to add some more courses in the social work curriculum to enrich it. They suggested also having the term “social justice” as part of course titles. Others suggested the need for lecturers to tease out issues relating to social justice in their lectures. According to one of the participants:

Lecturers should be made to participate in workshops and seminars periodically, where they will be trained on how to incorporate social justice themes in their courses and also bring them in during the delivery of the courses. This way, social justice themes, and ideas will be impacted on the students. (Ogechi)

Another participant also advocated for “an update of the curriculum from time to time to include social justice courses and courses relating to issues peculiar to Nigeria” (Obinna). The participants called for the professionalization of social work in Nigeria with all legal backing. A postgraduate student noted that “Social work needs to become a profession in Nigeria with all necessary legal backing, it will make it easier for social workers to tackle issues of social injustices in our society” (Musa).

Discussion

The study investigated social justice and social work curriculum and practice in Nigeria. Findings reveal that the social work curriculum of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, to a large extent has content on social justice. The participants indicated that the curriculum tried to promote social justice. Bhuyan et al. (2017) had noted that one of the aims of a social work curriculum should be to educate students against oppression so that they can in the future address such oppression. Other scholars like Bell (2018), Dahl (2016), and Kafula (2016) have emphasized the importance of incorporating social justice into the social work curriculum. Also, Edmonds-Cady and Wingfield (2017) have noted that the future well-being of people suffering from social injustice depends on a great deal how well-prepared social workers are and their readiness to engage in tackling injustices after graduation

Some of the participants noted that apart from incorporating social justice content into the curriculum, that how the courses are taught matters a lot on whether the social justice content will be emphasized or not. They gave examples of how some lecturers used local examples to bring home issues bothering on social justice while others do not. Therefore the skills, abilities, choice of words, and teaching styles of the lecturers are important for the successful delivery of social justice content in every course. Badwall (2015) and Baines (2010) have noted the importance of the quality of the training a social worker received as it most often will influence their teaching and practice. For example, social workers who received training in environments that limit advocacy may penalize those who take part in what they may see as disruptive engagements. Findings by Deepak, Rountree, and Scott (2015) have also noted that faculty competency is very important in delivering and addressing social justice within the designated required course. Funge (2011) also found that lack of peer sharing and support in developing their teaching skills are part of the reason why some educators are not able to meet students’ expectations in impacting an understanding of what promoting social justice means during practice. Mupedziswa (2008) has also reported that the use of the seminar approach in teaching social work in Africa especially at the MSc level can help give students exposure to independent and critical thinking. In Africa, Nigeria inclusive, there is a lack of teaching aids and internet services that makes the adoption of some teaching strategies impossible. This then points to a need for workshops and seminars from time to time to help teachers update their teaching skills and also understand better what is required in a course given their limited environment.

We further investigated factors that hinder the incorporation of social justice into practice in Nigeria. Focus group participants identified these barriers as cultural and religious factors, lack of professional status for social work, and corruption. We discovered the connection between the promotion of social justice and certain cultural and religious practices. Findings show that social workers may not be able to inculcate social justice into practice when it involves issues that bother on gender rights because of patriarchy. Patriarchy emphasizes inheritance only through the male such that a widow without a male child is completely disposed of her husband’s properties (Abara, 2012). This disparity finds cultural and, in some cases, religious support which perhaps aggravates the situation of women in the society and promotes social injustice the more. The participating students believe that such cultural and religious practices that engender social injustice make practice efforts to mitigate them difficult.

Lack of professional status by social work was also highlighted as part of the barriers hindering the effective reflection of social justice into practice. We understand from the discussions that Nigerian social work practitioners may not be able to promote social justice because there is no law backing their practice. Being licensed to practice can provide enablement for the social worker should the need arise. Currently in Nigeria, anybody can practice or teach social work thereby making it impossible for real social workers to be taken seriously. Monahan (2016) has emphasized the importance of professional licensing and regulation especially concerning enforceable accountability for public protection.

Findings from the study suggest that structural barriers render professional practice difficult as social workers are not able to effectively apply their training in human rights and social justice. We hope that the professionalization of social work will not only introduce stricter regulations and code for practice but will enhance the legitimacy of the profession, spur, and encourage practitioners to be more proactive in promoting human rights and social justice in their places of work (as well as the broader society). We however acknowledge that the passing of laws to make social work a profession will not be sufficient to empower social workers to effect the larger-scale changes needed to achieve social justice as societal values and culture still constitute formidable barriers.

In all, there is still a need to review and update the curriculum from time to time to accommodate new courses with more social justice content as posited by Kafula (2016). It is expected that the revised social work curriculum will equip students with the necessary knowledge and motivation to identify the root causes of injustice, inequalities, and oppression and provide a means of addressing them in Nigeria. Some of the social injustices that exist in Nigeria include widowhood practices (Adeyemo, 2016; Ihekwuba & Amasiatu, 2016), girl-child marriage (Nzenwata, 2018; Onyido & Brambaifa, 2018), female genital cutting (Ahanonu & Victor, 2014; Okeke et al., 2012), child witchcraft accusation (Onuzulike, 2013; Secker, 2012), denial of inheritance to female children (Abara, 2012), discriminatory practices against older adult, disabled persons, and albinos (Etieyibo & Omiegbe, 2016; Ikuomola, 2015). These social injustices can only be confronted by well-trained and licensed social workers who can promote social justice across all members of the community with the support of relevant laws and policies, as well as allies, like human rights activists.

Finally, the study was not void of limitations. The limited sample restricted to just students is one. Therefore, the researchers encourage similar studies with social work practitioners who are not students. The fact that lecturers of these students (undergraduate and postgraduate) were not captured in this study account for a one-sided perspective on the training and education. Thus, subsequent studies can include lecturers in the sampling. Regardless of these limitations, findings from this study remain relevant to Nigerian social workers, policymakers, and human rights activists who are concertedly making efforts to promote social justice in Nigeria through their teaching as well as practice.

Footnotes

Authors’ Note

Uzoma O. Okoye is a professor of social gerontology while accepting crossovers from social policy and social justice. She has published vastly and mentored a lot of young researchers and academics.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Uzoma O. Okoye

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