African Journals Online
The Journal of Cultural Studies

Vol. 4, No. 1, 2002

The Dialectics of Culture and Development 
Special Focus on Nigeria

Udu Yakubu

Editorial

This special issue of the Journal of Cultural Studies seeks to explore, through various theoretical and practical means, the critical and dialectical interaction between culture (defined in its broadest sense) and development in society. In order to create a contextualized and thorough understanding of the subject and to relate the issues involved to practical questions of human survival and progress especially in `poor' countries and in countries undergoing the tragic process of `deculturation', it focuses on a single geopolitical entity (i.e. Nigeria). A major advantage of such an approach is that the subject has been examined from several perspectives – recreational, intellectual and educational, socio-political, economic, metaphysical, etc. Essentially, therefore, the question of development in the Nigerian society, as we have in this issue, is placed in a holistic context.

Eight papers are featured in this issue. The first, `Cultural Erosion and the Crises of Development in Nigeria', sets the tone for the subsequent papers by exploring the breadth of the cultural crises in the country, and illustrating how these have made and continue to make genuine human and socio-political and economic development an elusive phenomenon. In the second paper, `Cultural Philosophy: The Ideological Praxis of Development', Ayo Fadahunsi creates a link between dream and reality, thought and action, reflection and reaction, and posits that there can be no development in a society that is not founded on positive ideas. Thus, he advocates the establishment of a cultural philosophy in the various sectors of the nation's life. In `Cultural Policy and Practice: Conceptualizing the Nigerian Experience', Hakeem Harunah examines the Nigerian cultural policy in the context of implementation and highlights the various activities of the nation's cultural agencies with the broad objectives of depicting what is being done and what can be done to achieve a cultural renaissance in the country.

The papers by Charles Ogbulogo, Anthonia Makwemoisa and Rotimi Fasan explore various aspects of cultural heritage in relation to youth existence in the Nigerian society. While Ogbulogo, through a discourse on proverbs, takes us to the traditional society to show the type of laudable values that youths were normally expected to portray, Makwemoisa discusses how an unending process of social exclusion suffered by the youths in contemporary Nigeria has precipitated the evaporation of such laudable values and brought about a regime of cultural alienation and social violence among the youths. Fasan portrays the implications of such a devastating lack of cultural vision on the nation's political life and how the youths who in historical times have exhibited desirable values and characteristics, now constitute themselves into gangsters and terrorist groups. The links between cultural disorientation and socio-political and economic underdevelopment are made obvious in these three papers.

The remaining two papers focus on aspects of material culture. While T. M. Akinwumi captures the relevance of art to political leadership in autochthonous and contemporary society, Oboh M. Yakubu focuses on the various arts and crafts of several communities and underscores their direct and indirect significance in the recreational, socio-economic, and metaphysical conditions of the Nigerian people.

Of importance, too, is the fact that several of the issues raised and conclusions made in the respective papers hold much relevance to other African nations. This is because there are similarities of experiences regarding the subject of culture and development among African countries. A major difference that would always exist has to do with the degree of intensity. Yet, for Nigeria, there seems to exist that level of `deculturation' (especially in urban centres) hardly to be found in any other African country. However, all the papers in the issue, within various multidisciplinary, theoretical and empirical tempers, offer various strategies by which the problems discussed can be tackled.

Abstracts

Cultural Erosion and the Crises of Development in Nigeria

Udu Yakubu

The paper explores the dynamics of cultural change and the erosion of cultural heritage vis-à-vis the consequent developmental crises that have enveloped the Nigerian nation for several decades. It is divided into five sections. In the introductory section, the concept of culture is defined, described, and contextualized within a general theoretical discourse. The second section discusses the essence of cultural heritage and identities and stresses the impracticality of conceptualizing development in any sphere of a nation's life without a thorough understanding of the cultural experience. The inevitability of cultural change is the focus of the third section. Yet, change, it is argued and illustrated, can be significantly premeditated, planned, and implemented to suit variously defined purposes. The fourth section gives ample examples that are illustrative of the erosion of cultural heritage in Nigeria. Supported by data from an extensive field research, it depicts how the youths especially are abandoning the various elements of their heritage (indigenous languages, clothes, music, festivals, arts and crafts, work ethics, religion, etc., for foreign, especially western, materials and values. Yet, the predominant modes of living in the country are far from being modern. The result, it states, is the pervasive `molue' culture that now characterizes every sector of the nation's life, and makes intellectual, socio-political and economic development a mirage. The paper, in the last section, is concluded on the note that a national cultural rediscovery and rebirth is not beyond the capability of any determined nation. Hence, it proffers various strategies of exploring national development in the context of premeditated, planned and thoroughly implemented programmes of cultural engineering.

Cultural Philosophy: The Ideological Praxis of Development

Ayo Fadahunsi

The paper underscores the relevance of a philosophy founded on the cultural heritage and identities of a people as a sine qua non for an all-round development in society. It illustrates that even the exploration of available material resources does not bring about development except there is in place an intellectual and philosophical structure of thought that put in proper perspective the relationship between the individual and society in various contexts of experience (including the availability of resources and how they are managed in relation to the needs of society). Also illustrated is how the availability of state-of-the-art technology could be antithetical to development in the absence of a well-articulated and human-centred system of thought in society. And such a system, for it to achieve the greatest desired effects, must take the spectrum of a people's cultural history into full cognizance.

Cultural Policy and Practice: Conceptualizing the Nigerian Experience

Hakeem B. Harunah

The propagation of racist theories to derogate the African person and, sometimes, the outright denial of his/her humanity are some of the legacies of several centuries of Western slavery and colonialism in Africa. A concomitant feature of these racist ideas is the glib proclamation of the rootlessness of the African by the denial of his/her pre-slavery evolution, growth and achievements in the sphere of culture. This trend is nowhere helped by the pervasive influence of globalization, which amounts, in large measure, to westernization. The paper thus discusses attempts at reversing the trend of thoughts, practices and propaganda against Africa's cultural heritage by exploring various cultural policies and programmes in the Nigerian nation. Its concern reflects both what is being done and what can still be done to strengthen various aspects of Africa's heritage and development. It call on Africans, and Nigerians in particular, to stem the tide of backwardness in the global market place by re-inscribing the foremost role of the African culture and worldview into the processes of development through a well-formulated and implemented cultural policies at all levels of society.

Proverbs as Discourse: The Example of Igbo Youth and Cultural Heritage

Charles Ogbulogo

Proverbs are universally acknowledged as possessive of their own system of logic and have a proven appeal to researchers, who continue to collect and classify them. However, their contextual explication and communicative content are often revealing of the cultural history and contemporary experience of those who use them. Drawing upon the Igbo example, this paper explores the discourse potentials of proverbs with the aim of depicting crucial aspects of the Igbo cultural heritage and as an instrument of youth orientation and mobilization.

Youth Existence and the Conditions of Exclusion and Underdevelopment in Nigeria

Anthonia Makwemoisa

The paper examines the socio-economic and cultural conditions of youths in Nigeria. Even though youths are seen as `leaders of tomorrow', many factors inhibit them from achieving this dream. The paper discusses how the phenomenon of cultural disorientation, the failure of government and the vagaries of globalization have precipitated several complex obstacles in the lives of youths in the nation. A major consequence is that the youths have taken their destinies into their hands by resorting to violence. Cultural violence encapsulated in various modes of alienation from their traditional cultural roots, and state violence, in all its shades and hues, have turned them into a socially excluded people in their own homeland. They, in turn, have come to perceive of violence as a legitimate means of asserting their rights and a `normal' way of life. A critical implication of this unwholesome development is the jettisoning of the laudable values of cultural heritage for lumpish modes of living. Consequently, underdevelopment is becoming increasing entrenched in various spheres of the nation's life. Thus, the paper concludes on the note that it has become imperative for the state and all stakeholders to make huge economic investments in the Nigerian youths, and more important, to evolve strategies of integrating them into the mainstream of socio-cultural developments in the country.

Politics, Political Culture and Socialization: Re-inventing the Nigerian Polity

Rotimi Fasan

A general point of consensus among many Nigerians is that the nation's development as a political entity has been hampered by the way and manner politics is practised in the country. There have, therefore, been calls, often clamorous and confused, even tongue-in-cheek, by and for Nigerians to be socialized in an atmosphere that will engender a new political culture. All told, in the more than four decades of the country's freedom from direct British suzerainty, many programmes of mobilization and orientation have been enacted. These programmes have floundered because they were poorly or half-heartedly executed. They have also been characterized by a marked lack of focus, as they have not been directed at the `appropriate' section deserving of genuine mobilization in society. This paper, therefore, examines the issues involved in the crisis of political culture in the nation, and the calls for a new social order embedded in a new value system as can be assured by a consciously executed programme of cultural and political re-orientation and re-mobilization of the entire population, and the youths especially.

Art and Political Leadership: The Example of the Alake

T. M. Akinwumi

African traditional art is apparently an egalitarian venture. So are the products of these arts. What may have eluded the cursory observer, but not lost on the researcher, are the subtle nuances and tonalities of that art as they delineate social categories and individuals. This is the subject of this paper, which seeks to establish the nexus between art and political leadership by an exploration of the example of the Alake of Abeokuta. The paper illustrates that leaders in autochthonous African communities were great patrons of the arts, and more important, conceived of the arts as a major field of experience in the business of political governance. Thus, it establishes the need to reappraise the cultural values of contemporary political leadership in African countries

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Arts, Crafts and Indigenous Industries in Nigeria

Oboh Moses Yakubu

The paper is illustrative of the cultural wealth of Nigeria in terms of arts and crafts. It provides a descriptive picture of the various characteristics of the genres in the past and present and in traditional as well as modern Nigerian communities. It functions within religious, intellectual, and socio-economic contexts. Hence, it depicts the relationship between arts, crafts and religion. It captures how people combine work with pleasure (i.e. arts and crafts) to achieve the principles of fulfillment and longevity. And more important, it portrays arts and crafts as a major means of livelihood in pre-colonial, colonial, and contemporary times. Hence, it stresses the need to strengthen various aspects of the nation's arts and crafts for the purpose of an appreciable human-centred development in the country.