Drug abuse has been observed among secondary school students who take part in athletic completion in Kogi State of Nigeria. This study examined influence of drug abuse on athletic performance of adolescents in Kogi State. Descriptive research design was adopted in carrying out the research. Population considered is the adolescents in secondary school in Kogi State. Multistage sampling procedure was used to select 200 respondents from Yagba West Local Government who took part in the study. A questionnaire titled ‘ Influence of Drug Abuse on Athletic Performance( IDAAP)’was used to collect data. The instrument was well validated and reliability of 0.76 was obtained through test re-test method of establishing reliability. One research question and four hypotheses guided the conduct of the study. Data was analysed with mean, t-test and analysis of variance. Hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Findings in research question showed that drug abuse gives athletes chances to win, gives them undue advantage to win, them boldness to disobey rules and regulations, among other influences. Findings further showed that there were no significant differences in the influence of drug abuse on athletic performance of the adolescents on the basis of gender, age, religion and school type. Based on the findings it was recommended among others that teachers should teach students on the dangers of drug abuse on their academic performance, teachers that teach sports activities should train the athletes very well so as to win athletic competitions without the use of drugs and school counsellors should counsel the students on the health implications of drug abuse.
Agubosi et al. (Thu,) studied this question.