There is a growing need for increased civic engagement in developing countries. We argue that civic education has not met this need in Nigeria because it is uncritical, but it can be reformed through critical consciousness theory emphasizing knowledge and critical thinking. However, for civic education reforms, we need to understand the relationship between sociodemographic factors and civic engagement. Therefore, we investigated the influence of six sociodemographic factors (gender, location, age, income, education, and ethnicity) on two civic engagement constructs—environmental civility and community volunteering—using the responses of 372 respondents on the Civic Engagement Scale. Results revealed that community volunteerism is mainly influenced by age, gender, and location, while environmental civility is mainly influenced by location and education, and there is a generally low level of civic engagement. The implications of these findings for a critical civic education aimed at increasing critical consciousness and civic action are discussed.

There is evidence of dissatisfaction of millennials with democracy and rising populist support for non-democratic forms of governance and nationalism among them. This presents challenges for civic education implementation and calls for promotion of constructivist civic teachers. Motivated by the need to apply deep civic education in inhibiting non-democratic beliefs and promoting viable strong democracy through active citizens, the present study employed a descriptive survey to investigate the influence of teacher's gender and educational background on teacher's implementation of civic education using data collected from randomly selected 16 secondary school civic education teachers and 320 secondary school students comprising 20 students of each teacher participating in the study. Two instruments were used for data collection on teachers’ initial and continuous training in civic education, and teachers’ implementation of civic education. Two research questions answered using mean and standard deviation, and three null hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance using correlation, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis H Test guided the study. The findings showed that a high number of civic teachers did not receive prior training in civic education as well as do not engage in lifelong learning or continuous training in civic education and teaching practice. Civic teachers do not also actively engage students in civic instructions. A positive relationship exists between teacher’s training in civic education and teacher’s implementation of civic education. While civic teachers’ educational background did significantly influence implementation of civic education, gender did not. The findings were associated to a number of factors including lack of cognition of the power of civic education in constructing, reconstructing and transforming (dys)functional societal ideologies. Promotion of lifelong learning among teachers, training of teachers in civic contents and methods, and utilization of ICT for instructional purposes were recommended.

COVID-19 pandemic illuminated the existence of non-formal community-based volunteering (NCV) across countries. NCV during the COVID-19 lockdown was, however, mainly in health and welfare causes since previous studies showed it improved citizens' health care and awareness in health emergencies (e.g., Ebola) in Africa. Educational needs were underemphasized and mainly managed by formal organizations; and their services are usually not enough. NCV, being substantial in Africa, could be leveraged on to meet children's educational needs during emergencies. To effectively utilize NCV to maintain access to education in emergencies (EiE), we need to understand its constraints. Hence, this paper adopts an autoethnographic method to highlight the lessons learned, from an NCV in EiE initiative during the health pandemic lockdown in Nigeria, about the constraints and possibilities of NCV in EiE. The volunteers were two education graduates and the targeted beneficiaries were COVID19-induced out-of-school children (ages 6-14) from low-income backgrounds. Important lessons for health (post)pandemic education policies, practices and preparedness emerged from NCV in EiE encountered constraints, including curriculum, legal, security, and political challenges. Given the findings, the study proposes institutionalizing NCV in EiE and ways of the institutionalization to enable increased access to education of vulnerable children.