Deepening Nigeria’s
Development: The Role of Culture and Communication
Presentation at a
National Colloquium in Sokoto on Saturday, January 7, 2017
By
Omoniyi Ibietan
Preface
We are gathered
here today to reflect on the promises of culture and strategic communication for
Nigeria’s development. As you all know, this gathering is among the sequence of
activities planned to mark the Fortieth Birthday celebration of our friend,
brother and patriot – Zayyan Tambari Yabo. Zayyan and I share a similar history,
particularly in the nature, dynamics and thrust of historical obligations we
encountered. Our lives’ trajectories as students in Nigerian universities,
cadres in the Nigerian Students’ and Youth Movements, student leaders and civil
servants speak eloquently to this existential reality. I am gratified that this
hall is peopled with many who are intimately involved and indeed who acted in
manners that shaped our stories.
Suffice it to say
that Zayyan represents that unique corps of social entrepreneurship – indeed, a
leading light of a budding and beautiful constellation of thinkers advocating a
rebirth of our country. I am sure we will be offered a more fitting citation of
Zayyan, but it is significant that I testify to his brilliance and nobility.
You all will agree with me that our gathering here today represents one of the
finest expressions of that characterization that I have just depicted.
Importantly, I have
mused repeatedly about my choice as the main presenter at this forum. My
conclusive thought is, given our history, any of our prodigious colleagues,
many of who are seated here - and armed with a modicum of tools of dialectics -
could have been chosen to do what I have been assigned to do today. So, I
consider this a singular privilege and I am humbled by the honour.
Introduction
Culture is a human creation - the totalizing experience of whatever man
invented and considered dignifying to shape the organization of his society. It
can be historical or normative, psychological, structural and otherwise. It is
an amalgam of heritages and practices that have come to define a people
differently from their neighbours and kind. This paper reflects on scholarly writings
and other documentations to dilate on the connection between culture,
communication and development.
Beginning with conceptual and theoretical framing, it explored the
unifying experiences of the cultures of Nigeria from a historical perspective,
examined the orientation of cultural policies and practices, attempted a
comparison of some cultures in relation to Nigeria, advocates agriculture as a melting
pot - a foundational cornerstone and rallying point of a new set of cultural
values - in view of its universality to all Nigerian cultures and its economic
significance. Finally, the paper reflects on cultural democracy and Diffusion theory
to emphasize the place of strategic communication as the organizing principle
for a new Nigeria.
Conceptual and Theoretical Reflections
The brass tack is to interrogate culture and communication as drivers or
triggers of growth and development. I confess ab initio that I align myself with the orientation that promotes
this perspective. Culture and communication are central to human and social
development.
But what is development? Barder (2012), in an attempt to give a finer
interpretation to what he called ‘complexity science’ explained how Amartya
Sen’s spectacular work in the 80s redefined the paradigm of development from
the traditional welfare economics’ conceptualization of income as a key determinant
of development. As Barder narrated, twice in contemporary history, one
individual, Amartya Sen, who received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998,
nudged the world to rethink development. After Sen convinced the world that
poverty involves a wide range of deprivations in health, education and living
standards, which were not captured by income alone - what he called the
Capabilities Approach - the UN Human Development Index with a multidimensional
approach was birthed to shape development scholarship and practice.
Two decades later, Sen deepened his thought and moved the benchmark of
development further to include freedom. In Development
as Freedom (1999), the work which largely encapsulates Sen’s thought on
development, he argued that freedom is not only a means but an end in
development – a primary end; and a principal means of development.
Conceptually, this is the constitutive and instrumental role of freedom – the
foundational view of development as freedom (1999:36). So, development must be
interpreted in terms of its impact on people’s choices, capabilities and
freedoms. In view of that, any instance of “unfreedom” undermines development.
Therefore, it stands to reason that development is substantive freedoms
which include elementary capabilities - ‘empowerment and inclusion’ - that
enable people to avoid deprivations such as “starvation, undernourishment,
escapable morbidity and premature mortality, as well as the freedoms that are
associated with being literate and numerate, enjoying political participation
and uncensored speech and so on” (Sen, 1999:36) Conclusively, as Sen argued
persuasively, development is nothing more than an expansion of human freedoms.
In essence, the human development approach is the expansion of the
“richness of human lives” rather than expanding the richness of the economy in
which they live, and this must be sustainable. As Barder (2012) has also
underscored credibly, development consists of more than
improvements in the well-being of citizens - broadly, it also conveys something
about the capacity of economic, political and social systems to provide the
circumstances for that well-being on a sustainable, long-term basis. Illustratively, the dictum: “do not give me
fish but teach me how to fish” speaks to some degree of freedom that enables
the incremental, cumulative fishing of the individual to define the economy. For
that reason, development is the sustainable expansion of human freedom.
Let us pause here with respect to the concept of development and migrate
to explore the concept of culture. Some scholars seem to hold the view
that defining culture is a startling, possibly notoriously difficult exercise
because it has now “come to be used for important concepts in several distinct
intellectual disciplines and in several distinct systems of thought” (Williams,
1976:76-7). Indeed, today, sociologists talk of culture as a central plank of
sociological inquiry. Culture also constitutes the main thrust of
anthropological scholarship, the same way in which communication scholars have
been investigating culture for decades under the theme of media and cultural
studies.
Historically, culture was associated with several things at different
junctures of human evolution and as Smith reported, by 1952, Kroeber and
Kluckhohn had assembled numerous definitions of culture from popular and
academic sources. From the 16th to 19th centuries, culture became generally
associated with the improvement of the human mind and personal manners through
learning – a metaphorical reference to improving practices, making it possible
for us to say in modern times that someone is cultured or having no culture.
Popular among several definitions of culture was the one offered by Taylor
(1971) which conceptualized culture as a “complex whole which include
knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, customs and any other capabilities
acquired by man as a member of society” (Smith, 2001; Erhun, 2015). And in a
1988 attempt to design a modern cultural policy, the Nigerian Government
through the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture, described culture as
the totality of the way of life evolved by a people in their attempt to meet
the challenges of living in their environment, which gives order and meaning to
their social, political, economic, aesthetic and religious norms and modes of
organization thus distinguishing a people from their neighbours. The congruity
in Taylor’s and Nigeria’s conceptions of culture which also speaks to a
characterization of culture as a form of civilization is very apt to our
discourse here because the definitions speak to ideas (art, morals, laws); as
well as activities (customs, habits) (Smith, 2001).
The above description
also aligns with Smith’s conceptual rooting and analogous to his definitional
classification of culture into the Historical (as a heritage transmitted); the Normative
(a way of life); the Psychological (communicative and problem-solving); and the
Structural (more in line with Taylor above). Since cultural theory is simply a
tool of explaining the nature of culture and its implications for social life,
Smith’s taxonomy is more illustrative and instructive. In a more concrete
utilitarian sense, Smith’s interpretation of cultural theory has provided
underlying themes which are applicable to our exercise today.
Accordingly, following
Smith’s lead, there will be an exploration of culture content; the social
implications; and finally the action, agency and the self. In other words, what
is the makeup of culture; what models of influence does culture exert on the
social structure and social life; and the connection between culture and the
individual – how culture shapes human action, the cultural construction of the
self.
Finally, this
discourse’s third key variable is communication. Really, when scholars
and practitioners talk of communication, often, they refer to an art, science,
activity, process, and/or methods of expressing ideas and feelings or of giving
people information. When it is used in plural form - COMMUNICATIONS - it often
refers to methods of sending information, especially through the application of
science, which is the utilization of technology - telephones, television,
radio, computers. In some jurisdictions, the geography of definition will
expand to embrace roads and railways as communication systems or links. We
shall return to discuss communication in a more detailed concrete sense in the
second part of the colloquium.
Cultures of Nigeria: A Recall of the Past
and Musing on Policies
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous, evidently the most socially, culturally
and possibly geographically diversified, is potentially the continent’s richest in human and natural
resources, and likely the world’s 22nd largest economy. Its geographical land
mass is estimated at 923,768 square kilometres and recent estimate by the National
Bureau of Statistics says Nigeria is populated by 193 million.
Although Nigeria is endowed in all ramifications the country is
singularly distinguished in Africa, South of the Sahara, for her rich and vast
cultural manifestation, a heritage of the past and a pride of the present
generation (Fasuyi, 1973). That glorious signpost of the past was expressed in
the stone-age terracotta seen at Nok, a village in the Bauchi Plateau in 1936.
It was evident in the masteries of governance and masterpieces of arts of Ife
and Benin. It was recorded in the notable and distinctive Nri civilization whose
arts manifested in the Igbo Ukwu bronze collections. It was captured in the wonders
of Daura as the spiritual home of the early Hausa States.
It manifested in the military and organizational prowess of Queen Amina’s
Zaria, as well as in the notable dynastic longevity of Bornu Kingdom. It showed
so evidently in the organizational and administrative mastery that was the
hallmark of the Sokoto Caliphate, a mark that made it easy for the colonialists
to introduce an indirect rule system in Northern Nigeria having met a
spectacular administrative system upon arrival in the north of Nigeria. Indeed,
our great heritage was certainly obvious in the uncommon influence of Calabar,
Opobo and other Niger Delta city states. It was of course so palpable in the
archaeological discoveries at Jemaa in 1944 which indicated the existence of
some agriculturalists, and possibly pastoralists along Katsina-Ala and
north-westwards to Kagara.
Indeed, the history of all the over 200 ethnic nationalities of Nigeria
is replete with astonishing breakthroughs with concrete masterpieces that have
become cynosures to visitors of leading museums and galleries all over the
world. It is no self-glorification to state that the Nigerian heritage as
exemplified by her arts and crafts have formed a critical “part of the sum
total of the cultural heritage of mankind”.
As recalled by Fasuyi, all these empires, kingdoms and states had clear
systems of organization that were cultural. Arts and cultural activities were
closely interwoven with the social life of the kingdoms under traditional
rulers that were both political and essentially spiritual leaders. They were
often advised in the planning of cultural programmes by councils and meetings
of elders and local chiefs who helped to assign “different tasks to people
according to their ability and talents”. Although “the administration of
cultural activities was largely a social obligation system with everyone
demonstrating willingness to make contribution”, artists – carvers, drummers,
singers, priests, sculptors, musicians, dancers, poets and many others dictated
the cultural pace of the society.
This heritage is marked by a system in which people performed different
assignments for the society without pay. They were often satisfied with the
personal gratitude expressed by the rulers and other community leaders, and the
commendation of the society. “They could also receive free cash crops, cattle
and clothing to cover their needs while they serve the society. If financial
compensation was required, the traditional heads met the artists’ demand”. In
the absence of formal education, one defining matrix of that era was the
apprenticeship system in which arts was usually practiced as a family trade,
and the secrets were transferred from the elders to their children. Training
was usually freely given and the beneficiaries were expected to do same for the
younger people. The foregoing thus substantially
repudiated the ethnocentric claims that pre-colonial Africa was primitive and
lacked any kind of meaningful civilization or government.
Ironically, it was colonialism that destroyed the beauties of the African
civilization and that has been argued convincingly in thousands of scholarly
fictional and non-fictional works. Achebe’s classic Things Fall Apart (2010) already translated into many languages,
some of which are international, is preeminent among the fictional
illustrations of the distortions of colonialism on the African culture. Indeed,
all the practices of Nigeria’s indigenous cultures narrated above were
undermined by colonial rule, beginning with the authority of traditional
rulers. The distortions were also heightened by the disingenuous introduction
of new religions and ‘formal’ education. Even new forms of dance emerged on our
landscape and old crafts equally became endangered. Due to a contrived lack of
support by the new administration and the widespread alteration of the cultural
system, hand-made clothes, mat-making and other local industries suffered
neglect.
The entire system began to be replaced with a new thinking. New agencies
of cultural education sprang up. The Nigerian
Magazine, first published in 1923 as Nigerian
Teacher, and then it later became the cultural information journal of the
Federal Government. In 1953, the Department of Fine Art was established as part
of the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology - it was later
transferred to Zaria where the Art Department had been expanded to enable the
introduction of a four-year Diploma programme. Earlier, a Federal Art Adviser
post was created and Ben Enwonwu, who had taught at government colleges and had
trained in London, was appointed.
But really, these were palliative responses to symptomatic manifestations
of a fundamental buckle of a people’s way of life. Regrettably, there was no
concrete response to this distortion even immediately after independence. There
was no Ministry of Culture and as Fasuyi (1973:26) further noted Nigeria thus
differed from many countries which planned and implemented cultural programmes
under a single Ministry. For instance, immediately after independence different
agencies and aspects of the nation’s cultural programmes were handled by four
different ministries. The Federal Ministry of Information was in charge of
cultural promotion, international cultural exchanges, cultural information and
publications, and mass media; The Federal Ministry of Education had purview
over art and cultural education, art exhibitions and artists’ society, museums
and monuments, and UNESCO-sponsored cultural activities; The Federal Ministry
of External Affairs had supervision over international cultural exchanges (Note
an obvious clash with Federal Ministry of Information’s function), and
industrial and cultural exhibitions (another clash with aspects of Federal
Ministry of Education’s function captured above); and finally, Federal Ministry
of Trade and Industry handled international trade fair and cultural display, and
promotion of arts and crafts industries.
In fact, the cultural promotion division of the Federal Ministry of
Information was headed by the Editor of Nigeria
Magazine until 1968 when the post of Federal Cultural Adviser was created,
and the former Federal Art Adviser was appointed to the position. Even the birth
of another cultural policy on August 29, 1988 did not fundamentally halt the
rapid descent of our cultural fortunes. Launched with fanfare, the policy
despite its all-inclusive scope, did not prescribe any normative definition. It
merely awakened Nigerians to understand their country’s multiculturalism as a
possible springboard to helping to set national cultural priority objectives. The
clear absence, up till today, of a strategic document with action plans stating
cultural values to be projected and promoted as well as key deliverables made
all pronouncements on cultural orientation a statement of intention.
The height of these serial statements of intention is stipulated in
Chapter II of the Nigerian Constitution 1999 as amended under the “Fundamental
Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy”. Section 21 says: “The State shall - (a) protect, preserve and promote the Nigerian
cultures which enhance human dignity and are consistent with the fundamental
objectives as provided in this Chapter; and (b) encourage
development of technological and scientific studies which enhance cultural
values”. Section 22 proceeds to state that
“The press, radio, television and
other agencies of the mass media shall at all times be free to uphold the
fundamental objectives contained in this Chapter and uphold the responsibility
and accountability of the Government to the people”.
We all know that the greatest lacuna in the above statements is that a
citizen cannot go to court to demand for an enforcement of a statement of
objective. Importantly, what constitutes ‘dignity’? The question of dignity and
its inherent contradictions have been of concern to scholars and culture
architects. Soyinka (2004) illustrates it rhetorically in Climate of Fear as he recalled the enshrinement of the word in the French Charter following that nation’s
revolution and also in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, noting that
the entitlement to dignity does not “aspire to being the most self-evident,
essential need for human survival, such as food, or physical health”. The
global climate of fear, Soyinka concluded “owes so much to the devaluation or
denial of dignity in the intersection of Communities…” (Soyinka 2004:95).
So, what kind of values do we project? The world is most certainly going
to judge us by what we do more than by the spirit of slogans we mouth. For
instance, our statutes, which are oriented in our culture and civilization,
enjoin us to hand an accused person over to a law enforcement agency for
prosecution. Therefore, it stands to reason that each time a citizen of Nigeria
or anyone inhabiting our geographical space dies from mob or individual action
due to alleged stealing and profanities, or even from preventable accidents of
any kind that was triggered by human action, or due to assumed or real
infractions of the law or belief systems, to that extent we devalue our
dignity, we undermine our civilization, we redefine our spatial reality from civility
to infamy, and we make it difficult for our cultural agencies to put forward a
genuine narrative of who we are because the media would have fed the public
with the story.
Curiously, the opening sentence on the directive on Nigeria cultures in
Chapter II of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution says “It shall be the duty and
responsibility of all organs of government, and of all authorities and persons,
exercising legislative, executive and judicial powers, to conform to, observe
and apply the provisions of this Chapter of this Constitution”. What’s the
reality? What are we doing at our desks as citizens and leaders in our own
right? Importantly, we all have a duty here to forge strategic alliances with
many of our compatriots who insist that Chapter II of the
Constitution should be actionable. It is already being debated at many of our
ever lively national debates these days and the objective grounds for this
advocacy is that the use of the word "shall" is a deliberate and
evidently stronger expression than "may". I agree with the thinking
that every attempt to make Chapter II of our Constitution actionable is a good
way to test our efforts at constitutionalism.
Thankfully, here is another prospect to remake our nation. A window of
opportunity has opened for a concrete official strategy to be instituted now
that we have all agencies in the culture promotion sector supervised by one
Ministry at the federal level - Federal Ministry of Information and Culture.
The Ministry’s mandate is to manage the image, reputation and the promotion of the
culture of the people and Government of Nigeria through a dynamic public
information system that facilitates access by the citizens and the global
community to credible and timely information about our nation. The mandate
appears huge and challenging but it is clear and achievable. The projection and
promotion of our cultural values as a development agenda require a new focus.
It demands that we organize afresh. It calls for a special collaborative
partnership of all stakeholders.
Indeed, the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture (FMIC) official
portal reveals a good attempt at conception of culture to aggregate our cultural
heritage; religions and sophisticated visual arts; festivals; entertainment;
tourism; arts; cuisines. Let us take festivals for instance. The festivals
which are pervasive across the country are meant to emphasize and showcase the
rich cultural heritage of the people. However, what outcome is expected from
the younger generation who are encouraged to observe the festivals? The festivals
have intrinsic lessons they teach; they are narratives that are meant to shape
attitudes and behaviours, and to regenerate us in terms of values embedded in
them. Are we taking the lessons? Are we acting accordingly? In the culture
sphere of the Ministry’s mandate, we have departments that span the spectrum of
culture – International Cultural Relations; Tourism Promotion and Cooperation;
Cultural Industry and Heritage; Domestic Ecotourism; Entertainment and Creative
Services, and so on.
We even have an Institute for Cultural Orientation
set up in 1993 as a research and training agency to harness culture for national development
and it has monitored the cohesion between cultural policy and social
integration, peace and national unity since then. Also, after the elaborate carnival of African arts and culture (FESTAC)
in 1977, the Center for Black and African Arts and Culture (CBAAC) was
established to improve understanding of African cultures. The Centre is also a
trove of some archives, same way in which the National Commission for Museums
and Monuments (NCMM) is. The NCMM also has as a key mandate the prevention of
art theft.
Fantastic ideas! May we ask if these departments and the Institute have
SMART Objectives? And how are their strategic objectives being measured? What’s
the vision and target by 2020? My point is if you do not know where you are
going you cannot plan how to get there. This is no swipe. We are raising
questions, perhaps rhetorically, and possibly it may take us back to the drawing
board. If the latter happens as a result of our gathering here today, then the
organizers of this forum would have achieved something spectacular for our
nation.
Our Cultural Values,
Juxtapositions, and a Vote for Agriculture as the Melting Pot
Cultural values are what is commonly held as standards of what is right
and wrong, and what is acceptable or unacceptable. They are essentially
offshoots of heritage, traditions and customs that have been extracted and
deployed as the driving force of social progress. Indeed, the objective of
development and “the criteria by which it may be evaluated are culture-based
and culture-bound”.
Culture is the primary means of survival and adaptation of man, offering
a summation and distillation of the past that provides sound basis for living
in the present and marching into the future (Erhun 2015). This seem congruent
to an earlier reflection on The
Challenges of Cultural Transition in Sub-Saharan Africa by Uchendu
(1977:71-72) who posits quite unequivocally that culture is more than heritage,
an historical product; it is more than an expression of man’s mode of living,
something that individuals in each society must undergo as a kind of fate;
culture must be seen as an instrumental agent, as another mode of intervention in
our social and economic life. So, Erhun continued quite frontally that we can
only harness culture for development if we recognize the place of culture in
the first place. Only then can culture be an instrumental agent as Uchendu had
canvassed. The organic connection between culture and development is evident in
the fact that development is “a creative response to social, economic and
political affairs”, - an expansion of human freedom as Sen argued
qualitatively, while creativity indeed finds the best expression in cultural
manifestations. This makes it pertinent to quip whether creativity can flourish
in the absence of basic freedoms.
If we reflect on the deployment of culture as the organizing principle
for development and survival in pre-colonial Nigeria as recalled above,
specifically the facts that the entrepreneur - especially artists - dictated
the cultural pace of the society as well as the social taste, it stands to
reason that there was a modicum of freedom which enabled people to optimize
their potential for the social good. It was that atmosphere of freedom that
nudged civility, social consensus and collaboration.
Suffice it to say that, the totalizing experience of our cultural
orientation - the summation of our culture from the trajectory of practices
from time to recorded history - will plausibly reveal that our cultural
successes pivoted on the levers of the sanctity of life and the need to sustain
it which necessitated the continued search for survival and security; communal
collaboration and family ties which connect to transfer of knowledge and skills;
hard work, industry and productivity as the basis for individual and social
progress; spirituality and faith in a superior being; discipline, loyalty and
objective support for leadership; recognition for social entrepreneurship; and
other values incidental to all of the above. But are these values still
subsisting? Are they still tenable, not as sophistries but empirically real in
truth and indeed? We can collectively reflect on the posers.
For instance, on the sanctity of life, I had earlier questioned the mob
action that we often undertake against our fellow men leading to extra-judicial
killings. Secondly, we are not properly circumstanced with economic survival
but we are hopeful this gets a boost soonest just the way our security got a
boost with the fall of Sambisa. We
are gratified also by the birth of Lake Rice, a testimony to collaboration
between Lagos and Kebbi States. The Federal Government does not have to ban
rice importation. Let the importers continue, let those who want to afflict out
gut with plastic rice continue. But we request for maximum punishment for those
who may wish to sabotage the massive production of Lake Rice and similar
initiatives.
How about hard work and productivity? What has happened to this value
that is so universal to our cultures? Has it not been undermined by ethical
corruption often manifested as nepotism, clannishness, bigotry and atavism?
What about those parents who ‘assist’ their children to pass examinations but
go to churches and mosques religiously, have they been able to resolve the
contradictions between religiosity and Godliness? In Japan, GANBARU (effort)
and GAMAN (enduring) are core values everyone knows you must deploy to reach
your goals. It is so central that children know from elementary school that
they must pass difficult entrance examinations to move to the next level of
education.
In Japan, thinking of others, doing your best, not giving up, respecting
elders, knowing your role, working in groups, are core values taught from
nursery school into the working world. If you all recall our narrative on the
cultures of Nigeria prior to colonialism you will find no fundamental
difference from our core values and those of Japan.
It is also similar to what you will find in South Korea and Singapore,
and many Asian nations that are heavily influenced by Confucianism - a belief
system whose central cultural values are duty, loyalty, honour, filial piety,
respect for age and seniority, and sincerity. Respect to others in Korea is so
important that you must strive to ensure you do not hurt other people’s pride.
It is embodied in the concept of KIBUN – pride, face, mood, feelings or state
of mind. So, if you hurt someone’s KIBUN, you hurt their pride, cause them to
lose dignity, and lose face. It is almost a sacrilege to do this, thus making
the principle of harmony a central plank of South Korean interpersonal
relationship.
Same features define the cultural values of Singapore. Asians,
particularly Japanese, South Koreans and Singaporeans have a high sense of
shame, people generally avoid being ridiculed. Having face indicates personal
dignity. Respect for elders and hierarchy is sacrosanct. Singaporeans claim to
egalitarianism has not affected their strong hierarchical relationships. In
1996, Singapore’s faith in the sanctity of respect and courtesy to elders
became a legislative matter when its parliament passed a law that mandated
children to assume financial responsibility for their elderly parents should
the need arise. Even in Europe and North America, particularly London and the
United States, we see inscriptions in the trains requesting younger people to
vacate seats for seniors and the elderly, as well as the physically challenged
members of the society if the need arises.
Regrettably, look at our landscape. Just imagine what we have done to
ourselves. Look at the way we communicate with each other. We hardly listen to
the other person before responding – we listen to respond, not to understand.
How do you respond to someone you have not understood? Look at the pattern of
road use in Nigeria, especially in Abuja. Take a look at our currency, imagine
how we handle it. The Naira is unarguably among the dirtiest currencies in the
world. How many persons are proud of the Nigerian Flag? How many of us here
have it in our homes, just anywhere in our house, even the small table flag? In
its stead, you will see hotels in Nigeria, because they claim to be
international, they will display the American and British flags. How many
international hotels hoist other nation’s flags, save for the purpose of an
international conference in which flags of participating countries are meant to
be hoisted?
Importantly, this is the month of January, a month dedicated to
celebrating our war heroes and veterans, most of who lost their lives so we can
live. Specifically, January 15 is Armed Forces Remembrance Day. But see
volunteers and war veterans all over the country practically begging people to
buy the emblem of this year’s commemoration - just for a thousand naira. The
money raised is usually committed to addressing some of the needs of veterans
who are alive, many of who are already indisposed. Regrettably, so many of our
compatriots do not know these facts. Where are our teachers? What is going on
in our schools? What happened to civic education? Why should people not be
taught the significance of Armed Forces Day? If they were taught, why should
they forget such a central item of our history? When we speak of cultural
values, these are some of the central components.
Food is central to culture and development. But look at what we have done
to our foods. Even Hippocrates, the Greek physician reputed as the father of
modern medicine, says every illness starts from the gut. But we process our
food in manners that afflict our gut. Despite evidences that when people eat
the way their forebears eat they live longer, we still eat to satisfy tastes
and preferences, not to nourish the body. See the way we process beans and its
derivatives like moinmoin and akara, what we call kose in this part of the country. We soak the beans seed and peel
before grinding to make the beans derivatives. This is entirely wrong!
In its stead, after soaking the beans seeds for some hours we are supposed to
simply throw away the water in which we had soaked them and proceed to grind it
with the peel after adding onions, pepper and the rest of what we need to add.
That process makes us to get all the fibre which the body requires for
nourishment. After all, do we peel the covering of the beans seed when
preparing it to eat as shinkafa de wanke or when we want to eat beans alone
as food other than its derivatives?
See also our processing of corn as pap for drinking, what the Yorubas
call ogi, also called akamu in this part of Nigeria. After
soaking and grinding, we proceed to sift it and throw away the fibre, the real
substance the body needs most, thus leaving us with corn starch and sugar which
ultimately predispose the body to diabetes and other ailments. Did our
ancestors sift akamu before preparing
it as food? If it was wise to do so, why do we boil fresh corn or roast and proceed
to eat it without removing the covering of every seed in the bunch? Did our
ancestors eat fried plantain? Did they not eat ripe plantain as they eat
banana? How can we feed so terribly and expect life expectancy to improve?
I hope we have begun to see the correlation between good food as a
central cultural practice and development. If people eat in a way that does not
nourish the body sufficiently, chances are that they will spend more on
medicals especially on the productive and energetic segment of the population.
I hear people say “you are what you eat”. That is only partially correct. The
real message is you are what you eat that is properly digested. Undigested food
builds up in the body as toxins and bad fat to create an onset of terrible
illnesses that may afflict the body later. Castro’s Cuba is a good example of
how increased spending in agricultural and healthy nutrition can produce a
reduction in medical and health-related expenditure.
Very surprisingly, when we also set out to cook soup and sauce, we steam
the oil to a point it catches fire. Are we making soap with the oil?
Unfortunately, we still proceed to cook with the same oil as food. We proceed
to eat chemicals, because that steaming already made chemicals of the oil. Again,
didn’t our ancestors eat roasted yam with ordinary palm oil? When they needed
to eat boiled yam, did they peel it before cooking? Did they not wash, slice
and boil, and peel the covering when it is done prior to eating? Of course that
was their own process and procedure because they knew that the bulk of the
nutrients in tubers are around the coverings.
The way we respond to these and many other issues define our cultural
values. The culture of a people is not just the antiquities, not just the arts
and crafts, not only the festivals, it is every of their actions that is
instrumental to defining who they are as distinct from their neighbours.
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, you will agree with me that
there is nothing in the cultural values of Asians and the so-called Western
nations as depicted above that are really at variance with what some of us saw
and experienced in Nigeria as children. Indeed, one can objectively state that
past leaders such as Herbert Macaulay, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Tafawa Balewa, Ahmadu
Bello, Obafemi Awolowo, Akanu Ibiam, Aminu Kano, and many of their generation
succeeded largely because they exemplified or at least approximated the great cultural
values of the society in their enterprises. So, whatever snapped to debase our
culture must be tamed. We must defeat every reproach and contempt that has
assailed our cultural values because of their implications for our development.
Finally in this regard, let us briefly reflect on an idea I have mused
about over a long period. It is a single item or thing I had thought could be a
melting pot for our different cultures. That is agriculture. This is a
phenomenon that is indigenous to all our cultures from time immemorial and it a
great idea to project as a central official cultural value to which all of us
can subscribe to galvanize the nation’s development. Religion, faith and belief
systems, or language and other issues that have become fault lines and
susceptible to volatility are not good candidates here.
If we reflect on the cultures, historically, agricultural practices in
one form or the other was practiced by our forebears. It is universal to all
our cultures. It is at the heart of our survival. It edified our industry. It
expresses our hard work. It has become a determinant of some our festivals. It
holds the greatest promise for the development of our nation. This is indeed the
most auspicious time to launch this awakening. Our economic revival rests on
our ability to feed ourselves, so we can spend less on importation of food and
save more funds for the reflation of our economic system - first by fixing our dilapidated
infrastructure, construct new ones and proceed to rebuild our industries by
creating organic linkages and necessary integration between agriculture and
manufacturing; create unparalleled incentives for the entrepreneur and deal
squarely with the seemingly intractable problem of unemployment, disease and
want.
Agriculture - farming, fishing, pastoralism and all other adjuncts of
agriculture, as well as other vocation connected with the soil - are clearly
our unifying cultural heritage and practices. They are the unvarnished
metaphors of our values and existential reality. Let me quickly illustrate
this. In my small village, Ogidi, Ijumu, in today’s Kogi State, we host
annually, Nigeria’s largest culture event in June. The festival is essentially to
celebrate agriculture. It started as New Yam Festival, celebrated on June 15.
Today, Ogidi Day, attended from all the continents of the human world, is a
celebration of agriculture, industry, arts, crafts and values of my community.
The New Yam Festival in Eastern Nigeria has come to be a defining matrix of
that part of Nigeria. Among the Yorubas, Egungun
or the Sango festivals are associated
with one seasonal crop or another. In fact, fresh corn is usually harvested
during Egungun festival in most parts
of Yoruba land. The Argungu Fishing Festival, unarguably among Nigeria’s most
internationalized annual celebrations, is oriented in the agricultural
enterprise. The festival which commenced in 1938 formally celebrated the end of
the historical hostility between the Sokoto Caliphate founded by the Great
Usman Dan Fodio, and the Kebbi Empire founded by the reputedly fiery military
leader and empire builder, Mohammadu Kotal Kanta, who had declared his kingdom
independent of the legendary Songhai Empire.
What about pottery, a significant Nupe/Gbagyi industry? Its basic
material is the soil just the way soil is central to agriculture. Even the Durbar is connected to agriculture
because horse breeding is an agricultural activity and horses are central to Durbar.
The same reality is observable in sculpture and drum making. The key materials
in these spheres are from agricultural activities. The same applies to regatta.
The most prominent in our clime is associated with the Nupes of Pategi in the
North-Central Nigeria, and some communities in the Niger Delta region. The
boats deployed are originally made from wood, an agricultural product.
Finally, in view of the challenges our economy faces at this point in our
history, and government’s call for the diversification of our economy, the most
deserving sector to refocus our energy and predicate our cultural policy upon
is agriculture. I am aware of the promises of ICT industry and its multiplier
effect on other sectors. It is also a cash cow but the dynamics of the
production process is not substantially determined by us, neither do we produce
the bulk of the materials of the processes of production. Our experiences have
shown we cannot predicate our national unifying culture on religion and belief
systems even though we are evidently a religious society. As I had earlier
mentioned, those have become terrible fault lines - the antagonisms occasioned by
religion have been so disruptive and often catastrophic. The most popular
sport, football, which like religion could be unifying is also alien to our
culture. We therefore owe ourselves a duty to make a revival of agriculture as
a principal plank of our cultural values.
Communication and
Cultural Democracy as the Organizing Principle for a New Nigeria
The earlier conceptual reflection on communication situated it as a
phenomenon on a spectrum – art, science, process, activity, methods, and
possibly more. Simply, it suffices to say communication is a significant
transactional process of transmitting information for the purpose of affecting
behaviour.
Perhaps the most
stimulating definition of communication was the one offered about four decades
ago, which is still relevant substantially relevant to today’s reality. A
review of the conception of communication by Burgoon and Ruffner (1978)
revealed that it is a symbolic behaviour that occurs between two or more
participating individuals. It has the characteristics of being a process, it is
transactional in nature and it is affective. It has a purposive goal directed
behaviour that can have instrumental or consummatory ends. Simply interpreted,
the conception of communication is something that involves the use of symbols
as representation of what is concrete or intangible; it usually involves two or
more persons; it is often a process (there is a process of encoding and
decoding as well as intervening variables that shape the decoding process); it
is interactive because it is an exchange; it affects the participants because
it is done with a purpose which may cause someone to change a behaviour or the
communication may cause a reinforcement of behaviour.
Although two snags exist in the above definition -
it does not contemplate an intrapersonal communication scenario and it does not
clearly accommodate a feedback - because a communication process is not
complete until there is a feedback. Nevertheless, the conception suffices for our purpose here today. Communication is
central to efforts aimed at managing uncertainties associated with daily
transactions and relationship management. It is the main instrument for managing
risks and expectations of stakeholder whether within the family, in
organizations as well as within and among nations. When a physician says “the
surgery was successful but I am sorry we lost the patient”, the gap between the
successful surgery and the survival of the patient is communication. I am
wondering if anything else could demonstrate the centrality of communication in
society as the statement above.
But why do we have to
share information? Why do we need to communicate? Why is it important to make
people understand issues? Why do we need to manage or alter behaviour?
Naturally, people have a right to know what is going on around them, what
affects them. They are stakeholders in the management of things around them and
the governance of their lives. People are also entitled to the guidance on the
appropriate code of conduct as members of the society in order to avoid
deviance, to achieve equilibrium, and to enhance development.
So, communication is life
and language is the main instrument because language is a tool for thought.
Interestingly, language is a product of culture – it is therefore of limited
use, limited to the culture, subculture and counterculture that produced it.
This is the reason if a concept does not exist in a culture, the particular
culture would coin words or conceptualize it by association – what it looks or
sounds like, essentially an approximation. This explains why MANGO is called by
that name or MANGORO across Nigeria – it is so-called because it is alien to
Nigeria and because it is already a part of our reality we must find a way to
express thought about it. Language is a medium of communication, the storehouse
of knowledge and therefore the means by which a culture aggregates and stores
its experiences as well as transmits the experience from generation to
generation. Importantly, language or communication transcends the spoken word.
It involves meta-language, the nonverbal cues, what is referred to as body
language – the signs or gesticulations and intonations which accounts for more
than two-thirds of communication.
The important
thing to note is that communication is the transmission of information in a
variety of ways. So, information and communication are not the same.
Information is the output (NOT THE OUTCOME) of communication. And information
is basically a collection of facts on a subject matter – persons, places or
things – particularly garnered sometimes in bulk or fragments or assembled
through cumulative experiential knowledge. When information is taken or assimilated
or accepted, it becomes knowledge. When the knowledge is applied to solve
problems and challenges, then the knowledge has become transformative - a
revelation. Essentially, information is useless if it is not accessed and taken
to imbue knowledge, knowledge acquisition is also a waste until applied to
solve specific challenges of life.
Conclusively,
when we talk of communication, we refer to the exchange of information in a
variety of ways. These varieties may take many forms – verbal or nonverbal
(over 60 percent of communication especially in interpersonal setting is
nonverbal – intonation and other body language); oral or written; formal or
informal; intentional or unintentional. The varieties may also take contexts
such as intrapersonal, interpersonal, small group, organizational, public
speaking, intercultural (of which traditional or indigenous one is a subset),
and mass communication.
Added to the
above is communication through the pervasive networks of online communication
(Email, Facebook, (Instagram and Whatsapp - both now subsidiaries of Facebook),
Twitter, IMO, BBM, Viber, and all the group chats that come with them, as well
as many other Over-The-Top, OTT, services that enable the delivery of textual,
audio, video and sundry multimedia content). All of these have emerged to
revolutionize communication in an astonishing manner. Importantly, none of
these forms and types can exist in isolation, none may be able to give
effective communication on its own – they all are interwoven and the effectiveness
of any of them will depend on several other factors such as the nature of
information, the audience, and other social factors.
Therefore, the take off
point in any communication process is credibility. The source of any information
must be credible. In recent times, generally the trust level has been quite low
since the financial crisis set in globally, sometimes resulting in astonishing
often silly changes in what people believe or do not believe. Thus, those who
will champion communication processes at whatever level and for whatever reason
must have a high level of integrity.
Our multicultural reality
also requires that we embrace cultural democracy. This is a scholarship and
advocacy movement that sees the society as a hotbed of many cultural traditions,
recommending that they all co-exist, and none should be allowed to dominate. This
places great premium on cultural diversity, a belief that mutual respect is a
prerequisite to survival in a multicultural world (Adams and Goldbard, 1995).
Other components of this idea are participation, and democratic control.
Communication programmes underwritten by this consciousness is likely to build
trust and be properly received.
Communication strategies
must also set out with knowledge of who the stakeholders are. There must be
stakeholder mapping, followed by listening to the stakeholders. If you are not
quite sure who the stakeholders are, do a baseline study or Dipstick Polls or
survey and within hours or minutes you can get an idea from the polls that
gives you a lead. From the beginning there must be preference for receptive
communication. Many times our responses show that we do not listen to the other
person - we communicate to respond not to actually understand. Communication is
about managing risks at several levels, so crisis can break at any time.
However, it is advisable to be proactive and preemptive.
It is always better to
make communication campaign planning evidence or fact based exercise. Conduct some
research about what you want to do. Undertake situation analysis. For instance,
where are we on cultural promotion? Where do we want to be? How do we get
there? How do we measure success? From here, you set the communication
objectives. Design a strategy plan and make it SMART. Monitor, educate, engage,
push communication, lobby if necessary, and collaborate. Make provision for
measurement and you may do a preliminary evaluation but get a measurement firm
to do a more objective measurement – it is ethically wrong for PR firms that
ran a campaign for a firm to evaluate their own work for their respective
clients.
Communication programmes
for cultural development or any purpose is the totality of an entity’s
activities. So it must be integrative of all components as mapped out in the
communication plan. This plan must derive from the development plan (for a
country) or business plan for a (corporate entity). Integrated communication
requires that the marketing and advertising component must have synergy with
the internal communication, stakeholder relations, media relations, issued
statements, corporate social initiative programmes, as well as social media
communication.
The programmes must also target
internal stakeholders as much as the external stakeholders. Any communications
manager or information minister or anyone so circumstanced who wants to be
taken seriously must think strategically. He or she must see himself or herself
beyond being a staff or political appointee - such persons must also assume the
position of a resident consultant. He must work beyond the call of duty to
ensure nothing goes wrong because he or she is as intimately involved in the
entire process as the CEO or the President as the case may be.
Importantly, those whose
purview is the communication desk must get strategic stakeholders to push their
campaigns and to amplify their voices. They may have to rely on opinion leaders
and others who are influential in making people adopt a behavioural change. The
Two-Step Flow theory in communication scholarship has reinforced the centrality
of opinion leadership in behavioural change campaigns. The point is information
flow to opinion leaders or moulders and from them to others. In essence, in the
information value chain, the opinion leaders and other influencers are critical
because they shape perception of issues by those who listen to them. This
theory has also been underscored by Diffusion of Innovation theory.
Diffusion is the process
by which an innovation (a new idea, information) is communicated through
certain channels over time among members of a society. So the DOI theory simply
explains how members of a society adopt new ideas through mass media and
interpersonal channels. Orr (2003) in an influential review of the theory noted
that its most striking feature is the reality that opinion leaders directly
affect the tipping of an innovation. A powerful way to effect a cultural
reorientation for the nation’s development is to affect opinion leaders’
attitude. Importantly, strong interpersonal ties are also crucial in the
formation of attitudes, especially through peers and opinion leaders from where
it trickles down gradually to the last person. This approach can reinforce or
compliment other approaches we might find congruent with our culture and
situation.
Conclusion
The denouements to our
discourse today are basically recommendations on what we need to do. First, we
must come to the reality that our culture has been fundamentally buckled. It
therefore needs a revival. This rebirth must be predicated on democracy that is
popular, representative and participatory or any other system that is popularly
agreed upon that empowers and enables the citizens to fight deprivations of all
types, and that guarantees their freedom on a sustainable basis. Popular
democracy is a precursor to good governance. It is about processes and
outcomes, processes that must not only be participatory but transparent,
accountable, efficient and targets all social groups.
Constitutionally, the
vision of a robust mutually beneficial society envisioned in Chapter II of the
1999 Nigerian Constitution under the general framework of Fundamental
Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy must be actionable. This
ensures that our country migrates to nationhood, and from statements of
intention to concrete measurable activities.
We must practice cultural
democracy and encourage every culture that is civil and dignifying to flourish
unhindered. From the array of cultures so agreed upon, we must rethink their
roles in the development agenda of the nation by aggregating our heritages,
traditions and customs to values that are concrete and measurable. As a
necessity, from the emergent array of cultural values we should reconsider
agricultural activities - being a cultural universal with abundant economic and
development significance to be the anchor point, the pinnacle of our cultural
architectural pyramid, and the melting pot of our values.
There must be an
organized conscious self-activity oriented in state policy that dovetails into
a clear strategic action of utilizing communication to effect concrete measurable
development of our country. It must be planned, focused and altruistic planning, focus and sincerity. It must connect
(not with a statement of intention) but with a clear blueprint of multi-sectoral
national development agenda.
That agenda must identify
all stakeholders and leverage on the integrity of the key elements to cascade
the message of cultural renewal. The communication programmes must be credible
and evidence based, and focused on all components of the communication
activities.
Importantly, we must
deploy technology. Throughout history - from hieroglyphics to Gutenberg to the
Internet - we see the role technology has played in driving growth and
development, especially since the end of the Second World War. If we have any
doubt that technology (precisely ICT) is today the single most important
enabler of economic growth, that skepticism has been laid to rest by the fact
that the four topmost capitalized firms in the world (Microsoft, Apple,
Google, and Facebook) are information and communication technology
companies. So, we must continually tap into the promises of ICT but we must do
so thoughtfully.
It is evident that communication
is the totality of our expressions, the entire gamut of our being – What we
wear, how we talk, what we eat, how we treat other people - especially people
of other cultures, tribes and religions, what we do at our desks, and our
attitude to matters affecting our country and affecting humanity. Communication
is a cultural expression of our thought and values and they are both instrumental
to development. Let us communicate the right message, appropriately and kindly.
Finally, I sincerely call
on the youth, and the young social entrepreneur to reflect on the totality of
the submissions in this paper, and assume the historic responsibility of
spearheading the remaking of our country. To be able to do this, we have to get
focused, to have a rethink, to organize anew and raise the banner for a cultural
and communication renaissance. We must forge the right kind of alliances and
support authentic voices and forces that are genuinely committed to rebuilding
Nigeria.
This means the Nigerian
youth must get back to study - not just to pass examinations - but to read great
books, to visit the right Web and online social networking Sites and read the
right kind of literatures across spheres of knowledge. We must also network
through face-to-face interpersonal communication, attend forums like this to
get exposure and share ideas, we must also travel around the national space and
outside of it as much as resources permit, and be armed with the precise
thought, productive tools and engagements that our country requires at this
time, because what history teaches is: “The man who can read but who does not
read has no advantage over the man who cannot read”.
THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR
ATTENTION. May God Bless Nigeria!
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