CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
Indecent dressing and other antisocial acts like; drug abuse and cultism, has become a major issue in moral misconduct among students of Nigerian tertiary institutions. Indecent or crazy dressing, also known as dress to kill is rampant among universities, polytechnics and colleges of education students, particularly the females; all in the name of wanting to look sexy, sensual, scintillating and stimulating, not remembering that they ought to look decent and responsible. Wearing skimpy clothes, also known as fitted, strapless and short blouses and sagging of trousers low waist or ass down, by boys and even girls, cleavages and sleeveless shirts, also known as spaghetti or offshoulder, are major moral problems associated with decency in dressing faced in tertiary institutions today.
Apart from the skimpy and tight fitting nature of these dresses, they are again transparent; revealing certain parts of the bodies that under normal dressing patterns ought to be hidden away from the glare of people. Ironically, these are the renowned modern fashion trends among students nowadays.
Nowadays, students now dress indecently for reasons such as poor parenting, peer pressure, wrong use of the Internet, fading values as well as demonic influence among others. The negative sides of indecent dressing are that many of these students become victims of rape on campus; they are lured into prostitution by peers because of the way they dress. Subsequently, they are tempted and influenced to become members of one cult group or the other and these result in poor academic performance. In order to curb indecent dressing on Nigerian campuses, practical initiatives must be embarked upon to educate the student populace about the potential consequences associated with it. Although, the steps being taking by many tertiary institutions to reduce immoralities and indecent dressing on Nigerian campuses are highly commendable. Today, dress codes and strict rules enforcing compliance of students have been introduced in colleges of education, polytechnics and universities across the country.
Improper dressings of students of Kosofe LGA of Lagos State has a high tendency of impacting negatively on their academic performance as the output of male lecturers most especially can reduce when they concentrate on watching such provocative dressings during lectures. Female students on the other hand spend so much money in buying such useless dresses instead of spending them on their academic materials. Their indecent dressing also makes them patronize discotheques, night clubs, brothels and hotels where they can have fun at the expense of their studies. The possibility of some male lecturers and even female lecturers falling prey to such seductive dressings which may result in sexual favours between the lecturers on one hand and students on the other hand is always high. This will surely be a hindrance to quality education; as such students will not be able to perform up to the expectation of their prospective employers and consequently lead to loss of revenue to the state.
Aside that, the poor performance of students as a result of indecent dressing can be linked to unemployment. This is so because students who dress indecently have divided attention for their studies and are therefore unable to receive adequate practical training which is a prerequisite for employment by most companies. And because such companies are not ready to spend extra money training such partially groomed graduates, they will later find themselves joining bad gangs after their graduation. It is in the light of this that this research is aimed at investigating the possible causes of indecent dressing, its negative impacts on academic performance of students of Kosofe LGA of Lagos State, Nigeria and also suggest the possible solutions.