ATTITUDE OF NIGERIAN CITIZENS TOWARDS SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION ON COVID-19

This i esearch work investigates the attitude of Nigerians citizens towards scientific infoi motion on Covid-19. Literatures relevant to the topic were reviewed were five research questions were raised to guide the study. The study adopted descriptive research design of the survey type. The population of the study comprises of all community members in Akoko South West Local Government Area of Ondo State. The samples used for the study consisted of 100 respondents who were randomly selected respectively. A well validated questionnaire with a reliability coefficient of (r=0.75) which deemed the instrument reliable was used as an instrument for data collection for the study. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics of frequency count, mean and percentage as well as independent sample t-test. The result revealed that Nigerians perceive COVID-19 is as a result of laboratory failure (1.58), they see eating or contacting wild animals resulting in the infection of CO VID-19 (1.65), they believe that COVID-19 is a natural disaster (1.84). Nigerians accepts that CO VID-19 virus spreads via respiratory droplets of infested individuals (1.82), virus is transmitted through the air over long distances (1.72), Persons with COVID-19 cannot infect the virus to others when a fever is not present (1.67), and that CO VID-19 can only be contacted through blood of the infected (1.73), they believe that Handshake can transmit CO VID-19 (1.84). Diarrhea, high fever, uncommon cold and snuffy, sore throat, Nose bleeding is agreed upon as symptom of CO VID-19 and is all symptoms of CO VID- 19 (1.56). The findings showed that students exhibit moderately positive attitude towards the preventive measures to curb the widespread of COVID-19 with mean scores consistently slightly above the mean of 1.50 for all items. It was also deduced from the findings that Nigerians believe that COVID-19 vaccine kills in less than 2 years. Based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations were made Communications via various channels designed to promote the adoption of preventive behaviors among the public should focus on raising the public’s perceptions of disease seriousness and risks and promote the effectiveness of adopting behavioral measures to reduce the perceived risles, to improve the self-efficacy of COVID 19 outbreak control. Health education programs that aim to improve COVID-19 knowledge and perception are recommended to increase public awareness and compliance with advised preventive measures. These findings highlight the need to continue encouraging and emphasizing the maintenance of social distancing, hand hygiene, and wearing masks to prevent the spread of the virus. Keywords: Attitude, Covid-19, Disease.