KNOWLEDGE OF TORT LIABILITY AMONG GAMES MASTERS IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN MAKURDI, NIGERIA
Keywords:
Games, Game Masters, Tort negligence, Knowledge, Liability, Sports AdministrationAbstract
This study assessed games masters’ knowledge of tort negligence liability in sports administration within secondary schools in Makurdi, Benue State, Nigeria. It specifically investigated their knowledge regarding civil assault and civil battery. Adopting a descriptive survey design, a census sampling of 244 games masters was sampled from 244 secondary schools in Makurdi, 4 questionnaire were lost during the retrieval process yielding 240 valid responses via the structured Games Masters' Liability Awareness Test (GMLAT) questionnaire. Data were analysed using mean scores, standard deviations, evaluated against a 6.0 (60%) baseline competence benchmark to answer research questions and a One-Sample t-test was used to test the hypotheses at a 0.05 significance level. The findings revealed a stark dichotomy in legal literacy. Games masters lacked a statistically significant level of knowledge regarding civil assault (mean = 5.95, SD = 1.15, t (239) = -0.71, p = 0.48), hovering below the competence threshold. Conversely, they possessed a statistically significant knowledge of civil battery (mean = 7.83, SD = 0.98, t (239) = 28.94, p = 0.01). This indicates that while administrators recognize that aggressive, unpermitted physical contact is legally actionable, they fail to realize that verbal threats and intimidating coaching behaviours can independently trigger civil assault claims. The study recommends that the Ministry of Education introduce mandatory quarterly legal literacy workshops and code-of-conduct policies to deconstruct sports torts and eliminate these critical institutional vulnerabilities.
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