Quantitative Analysis of Relationship Among Negative Social Indices, Environmental Protection Practices, and Governance Corruption in Selected South East Nigeria States

The study examines causal relationship between negative social indices and governance corruption and poor environmental protection practices in the South Eastern states of Nigeria. Using a random sampling technique, the researchers selected 2 states (Imo and Anambra States) among the five South Eastern states. The cluster sampling technique was used to sample a total of 2000 respondents who were also stratified on the basis of their gender and level of education. Specifically, 1200 among the samples were female and 800 were male. A self-made questionnaire titled Social Indices and Governance Corruption and Environmental Protection Practices Questionnaire (SIGCEPPQ) was used to elicit data. The SIGCEPPQ questionnaire was tested to be valid using the face validity approach and was found reliable with a reliability coefficient of 0.74. Simple percentages and Pearson Moment Correlation statistics (Pearson r) were used to analyze the collected data and to test the generated 2 null-hypotheses. The findings revealed that negative social indices leading to corruption in governance in the region included: weak political accountability, 53.1%, political party influence, 51.9%; and leadership incompetence, 50.5%. On the other hand, negative social indices leading to poor environmental protection practices included, 92.5% government policies, 50.4% inadequate resources, and 45.1% poor environmental awareness. At the level of hypotheses testing using Pearson ‘r’ statistics, a significant relationship was found between the presence of negative social indices and corruption in governance (0.34 > 0.16) and between negative social indices and poor environmental protection practices (0.29 > 0.16). Therefore, it was concluded that the presence of negative social indices must be eradicated to eradicate governance corruption and poor environmental protection practices in the south eastern states of Nigeria