CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

Guidance and counseling services in the university promote the personal social planning and programming for students with special learning needs. The students need to prepare themselves not only academically but also socially in order for them to gain acceptance into the new community. It’s also good to know that, the undergraduates, even though a good number of them are adults, there is the need to guide them if the purpose which they are in the university is to be achieved.  Also, majority of students in the University are faced with anxiety and stress, to be able to handle situation like this, they need counseling.   The services of guidance and counseling in tertiary institution is to bring about well guided and properly counseled among university undergraduates who will be leaders of tomorrow because the role of guidance and counseling cannot be over emphasized.

Most university administrators in Nigeria are searching for stability as a way out of crises and a means to restore some lasting tranquility on campuses. Recently, dramatic increase in violence and revolutionary behavior among students has almost attained a high proportion throughout the world. Guidance and counseling services are needed in order to find lasting solutions to some problems that have plagued institutions of learning for a very long time.   Students need counseling programme as a result of these unruly behaviors. In order words, university undergraduates need help to resolve their home, social, academics, health, emotional, vocational, financial and religious problems. The undergraduates at this level are made to understand the nature and complexity of their problems and better means of solving the problems.     Fresh students appear to be plagued by the questions self-defined by their present status within the community, by their position within their peer group and by their academic performances in secondary school. Without counseling programme/support, they will feel inferior and be defeated of their social identities. Difficulties may come the way of new students trying to adjust to the new environment and they will find it painful and hectic. This may be due to the differences they encounter in life when in secondary schools.    Values espoused by other students are social climate, course of study, study conditions and degree of freedom and adjustment to these differences often result in crises of some sort. The crises can be averted if guidance and counseling services are made available to this category of students at the point of entering into the university.   Since counseling aims at the total development of the individual persons, it also helps students to find spiritual and ethical measuring in life and help them to live in harmony within the other members of the university community. The inculcation of ethical values through guidance and counseling services will go a long way in curbing irrational behaviors among university undergraduates. Effective counseling services in the university will constrain students from rebellion against the established rules of their schools organization and destruction of school properties.  The student is aspiration should be brought into balance with the goals of their educational institutions and those of their surrounding community will be maintained.   Denga (2003) is of the opinion that the need for guidance and counseling in our educational system is increasingly pressing as educational, economic, technological, social and ideological advancements are being made. Each student will need to be helped to strengthen his own abilities to make meaningful and realistic choices and to face problems encountered in the society.

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