ABSTRACT:

Nigeria as a country has been plagued with a spate of bombings and suicide terror attacks by the Boko Haram sect over the past few years. This development has no doubt brought untold hardship on the citizenry but it is not very clear how Nigerians feel about the impact of these terror attacks. Based on available psychological literature, there is very little known about the attitudes and beliefs of Nigerians towards terrorism in the present context of perceived insecurity, bombings and suicide terror attacks. In a cross sectional design, using a convenience sample approach, a 36-item questionnaire on the attitudes towards terrorism developed by Abdolian and Tokooshian (2003), was adapted and modified to conform to the present research context and administered to participants who volunteered their time and met participation requirement. We explore the findings and discuss the implications. We suggest the need for a baseline study in Nigeria to understand the attitudinal direction of Nigerians to terrorism.