World Culture(d) Day

How cultured is our society as well-organized, well-equipped psychopaths bent on decimating our critical populace at no provocation at all-in the States of Borno, Adamawa, Yobe and now extended to Kaduna and Jos? Is there any iota of cultural sensibility in the horrifying ill-motivated kidnap/abduction of over two hundred school girls in Chibok for over […]

How cultured is our society as well-organized, well-equipped psychopaths bent on decimating our critical populace at no provocation at all-in the States of Borno, Adamawa, Yobe and now extended to Kaduna and Jos? Is there any iota of cultural sensibility in the horrifying ill-motivated kidnap/abduction of over two hundred school girls in Chibok for over forty days without a clue on their fate and without certitude of the state of their being?
To be sure, the World day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development holds on every May 21st, as sanctioned by the United Nations to assist people all over the world to increase their understanding of the concept, essence, notion and imperatives of cultural diversity-the differences and commonalities in cultures all over the world, and now especially in the age of Globalization. Many nations that are not bogged down by social incoherence, decadence and literal battlements like we do organize various events and discourses around issues of transmuting diversity to sources of national strength and national development; professional bodies hold seminars and workshops, for young people and children, education programmes are organized, and it would be interesting to know the kind of debate, besides protests that were held around the plight and predicament of our 200 girls held in distressful hostage in the forest of Chibok. There were also exhibitions held to call attention to issues of inclusion, acceptance, derivations and collaborations that typify and symbolize diversity and differences in cultures in order that people can interact and live together better rather than the proliferation of hostilities, hate, antagonism and conflict some of which end up/escalate in war and violence.
On occasions as this, it is pertinent to reflect, not on definitions and concepts which have become widely discussed and understood in varying perspectives and dimensions, on the basic assumptions of culture. We seem to all know that culture is fundamental to life and living; human existence and human civilization. This regards the totality of the responses of people to the challenges of life in any environment. It has been well canvassed, and aptly so, that culture offers meaning, purpose and value the social economy, political economy, the ethos of aesthetics of societies. And when we consider culture from the material and materialist perspectives, culture has ramifying impact on the production, distribution and exchange aspects of mankind’s social and relational existence. The dynamics of history reveal that diversity is not necessarily a negative phenomenon, since Professor Osuntokun has studiedly proffered, our diversity as peoples all over the world are not as fundamentally and extremely different from one another as has been adduced, deployed and manipulated by people of politics, mainly. He argues that ‘there is a universal human culture (as also affirm in Globalization) because all men and women descended from a common ancestry’. Nigeria’s plurality in language, ethno-nations and religion has meant that there ‘are as many cultures in Nigeria as there are different nationalities. But it is important to know, as he has also identified, that the national has been undergoing ‘cultural synthesis’ long before the so-called political and formal amalgamation. The various peoples of Nigeria has established critical contacts for many centuries such that they have established ‘commonality of culture, historically and linguistically. Other areas of life show these growing meshing identities across the nation, such that can be deployed to build a coherent national culture and national consciousness. This is important at a time like this when the basis of our nationhood is being reviewed, rationalized and established. It is hoped that the national conference going on in Abuja will properly address itself to this question of nationhood.  This growing consciousness of nation-ness, manifest in cultural continuity, is evident in many areas of our lives as Nigerians-our food (if you go out of this country, you will see Nigerians going all over the place looking for Nigerian food), our dress (Nigerian colours are simply unsurpassable anywhere.
Now, we can look specifically, if cursorily, at our diversity and its possible transmutation for national development. We can go back to history, to enlighten and educate ourselves about the role of culture in social construction in pre-literate times in order to inspire and embolden the future. Our traditional artists, our griot, the bard, the plastic artists, the sculptor, the oral performer, were the custodians, repositories, active libraries and the interpreters of the Nigerian and African civilizations and experiences, such that an adage says that when an old man dies, a whole library is wiped off. Now, we must also look into the strength and resilience of our indigenous cultures such that it was difficult for the west in its ideological drive to project an unhistorical image of Africa failed woefully. Our art and culture survived the ravaging, systematic effort of the imperialists and colonialists to dislodge and uproot them. President Seku Toure once spoke of the immortality of the African people as explainable by the conservation of our culture and our arts in spite of the long-drawn and painful years of inveterate cultural aggression, even genocide perpetuated by the West. Indeed, and as the Nollywood has begun to demonstrate, one concrete entry point of Nigeria to the neo-imperialism called globalization, the cultural platform is first and most authentic offering.
In a nutshell, we must strengthen this argument from the perspective of language, the sole instrument of cultural expression. It is often argued, from a defeatist plank, that being heterogeneous culturally and linguistically is an impediment to national integration and national development.
(Concluded next week)