Causes Of Academic Anxiety Among Tertiary Institution Students
[A CASE STUDY OF ILORIN METROPOLIS OF KWARA STATE]

Ibrahim (2005) opined that every student expresses anxiety at different times in life. It is a natural and common syndrome. When a class teacher or lecturers gives the class problems, inform of an examination to solve, anxiety sets in and to bent or fight the state of anxiety, the problems have to be solve either way and if unsolved, the anxiety state exist and the students will continue seeking ways of being successful in academic pursuit.
    Ibrahim (2005) opined that anxiety have remained a human characteristic that has generated a lot of research and many researchers have attempted to define it and the definitions vary as each researcher viewed it.
    Anxiety is defined by Berne (1990) as the feeling, which arises when a conscious or unconscious tension is stirred up, and seeks a method of relief. Ibrahim (2005) viewed anxiety as a type of fear, generalized emotional state, a persisting distressful psychological state, arising from an inner conflict. Ibrahim (2005) opined that anxiety is a unpleasant complex and variable pattern of behaviour which individuals show when reacting to internal stimuli that is thought or feeling, or external, that is environmental situation stimuli which can give individual some concern or fear.
    Similarly, Ibrahim (2005) defined anxiety as emotions, characterized by feelings of anticipated anger tension and distress and by arousal of the sympathetic nervous system. Anxiety has been defined also by Ibrahim (2005) as feelings                        of fear and uncertainty about the future or about something unknown.
    Ibrahim (2005) noted that the causes of anxiety derive its name from nature of the specific unpleasant events that anticipated. Therefore, individuals can have anxiety when they are worried or fear about educational pursuits. The above definition all point to the fact that anxiety is as a result of fear of something and in this case, it is academic success. This contradicts Ibrahim (2005) viewed that anxiety is a more general reaction of feeling threatened which is not clearly and specifically attached to any apparent cue. Ibrahim (2005) also defined anxiety by seeing anxiety as a general state of apprehension and uneasiness in which the object of the fear or anger is under. Also he saw anxiety as a vague, unpleasant feeling accompanied by a premonition that something undesirable is about to happen.
    Ibrahim (2005) postulated that anxiety is the emotional reaction to an event which leads people to divert their energies to coping with themselves in some ways. He regarded anxiety as a danger signal and differentiated between objective anxiety with its cause in the external world and neurotic anxiety with internal causes, this leads to the perception of danger and then the anxiety would vary in proportion of the size of the external danger.
    According to the social sciences, the sources of anxiety derive their names from nature of the specific unpleasant event that there anticipated. We can therefore have anxiety when students are worried or fear about educational success.
    In all, one commonality in all the definitions is that anxiety is viewed as that threatened, discomforting state of response the worry feeling is peculiar to anxiety state (Berne 1990).
Concept of Academic Anxiety
    Academic anxiety is to a certain extent, unavoidable, necessary and even productive, since it motivates students to spend time preparing for educational pursuit. However, when anxiety elevates above this productive lever, negative outcomes such as the following begin to occur.
    Students cannot concentrate during study time, procrastinate and become immobilized, students will not be able to recall materials that they have studied and really know and the performance on academic pursuit consistently falls below one’s expectations.
    Also misdirected attention or attention difficulties (like watching the clock, loosing focus) presence of interfering thoughts, for example self talk, or activity which causes anxiety (I will never make it), presence of physiological emotional upset (for instance nausea “butter flies” sweating and so on) and inappropriate behaviours (panic, study avoidance, etc.).
    DSM (Diagnostic and statistical Manvel of Mental Disorders IV) referred to academic problem as a problem that is not caused by mental disorder, is severe enough to warrant clinical attention. The diagnostic category is used when a student or students are facing significant academic difficulties that are not deemed to be due to a specific learning; nevertheless, intervention is necessary because students’ achievement is significantly impaired in school. Therefore, a student who is of normal intelligence and is free of learning disorder but is failing in school of doing poorly falls into this category.