PROSPECTS OF INTELLIGENCE-BASED INITIATIVES FOR ATTAINING SAFE SCHOOL INITIATIVES IN IKWERRE LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, RIVERS STATE

The study examined the prospects of intelligence-based initiatives for attaining safe school initiatives in Ikwerre Local Government Area, Rivers State. To achieve this, four (4) objectives that transformed to 4 research questions and their corresponding four hypotheses were formulated to guide the study. The study adopted the descriptive survey design. The population of this study comprised the principals, teachers, students, community leaders, and security officers in Ikwerre Local Government Area. A sample of 200 respondents (comprising 10 principals, 50 teachers, 100 students, 30 community leaders, and 10 local security officers) participated using a six-phased sampling procedure. A 30-item self-structured instrument titled “Intelligence-Based Safety Prospects for Attaining School Safety Questionnaire (IBSPASSQ) with a reliability coefficient of 0.875 necessitated its use to collect data, analyzed using mean and standard deviation (with a criterion mean cut off of 2.5) to answer the research questions, while Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The study revealed grand mean scores ranging from 3.72, and 3.73, indicating that the perceived effectiveness and feasibility of integrating intelligence-based initiatives into the existing school safety infrastructure in Ikwerre Local Government Area. The study also revealed p-values of 0.004, and 0.003, indicating that actionable strategies or policies for integrating intelligence-based technologies significantly enhanced school safety in Ikwerre Local Government Area. The study recommended, among others, that government and corporate organizations should partner to reform policies that support increased investment in infrastructure, stable power, training, and digital literacy that will ease the adoption of intelligence-based safety technologies in schools.