Cultural Awareness and Religious Tolerance a Vital Tool for Sustainable Development
Sarkin Fada, Halima; Amali I. O. O.; Okafor, I. P. & Manir Hussaini
Department of Educational Foundations, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto
Department of Social Sciences Education, University of Ilorin, Ilorin Nigeria
College of Agriculture, Zuru, Kebbi State
Email: halifada@yahoo.com, manirhussaini576@gmail.com
Corresponding Author: Sarkin Fada, Halima
ABSTRACT
This study investigated the level of cultural awareness and religion tolerance among the undergraduates in university of Ilorin, Ilorin Nigeria. It also examined the influence of sex, religion and ethnic group on cultural awareness and religion tolerance level of university undergraduates. This study adopted a survey design. The population for the study comprised the total undergraduate students in university of Ilorin. The sample size for the study is 335 undergraduates selected randomly from eight randomly selected faculties. Two instruments were adapted to collect data for the study. They were Multicultural Awareness Scale developed by Awang-Shuib, et al. (2012) and Tolerance for Disagreement Scale (TFD) developed by Teven, Richmond and McCroskey (1998). The two instruments were pilot-tested before their use and the reliability coefficient for MAS was 0.75 after deleting two items out of the original 12 items while TFD yielded a reliability coefficient of .675 after deleting three items from the original 15 items. The result showed that 148(44.2%) of the undergraduates had low level of cultural awareness, 151(45.1%) of them had moderate level while 36(10.7%) of the undergraduates had high level of cultural awareness. It also showed that 122(36.4%) of the undergraduates had low level of religion tolerance, 168(50.1%) with moderate level while 45(13.4%) of the undergraduates had high level of religion tolerance. The result further showed that variables such as sex, religion and ethnic group were not significant influence on level of awareness and religion tolerance of the undergraduates at 0.05 probability level. The study concludes that more can still be done on creating cultural awareness as well as the need to learn how to tolerate religious beliefs of one another for a peaceful co-existence and for the achievement of sustainable development in Nigeria.
Keywords: Cultural awareness, religious tolerances and undergraduates students
