by Faith Kordoo
Socio-cultural values are set of principles, beliefs and rules that govern the behavior of the people within a given society. These values are learned from one’s family at a tender age and subsequently through exterior social interactions. They influence achievements and satisfaction of needs. They give meaning to social interactions and as we progress in life, they help us to identify what we prefer or not of people, what is wrong or not according to values assimilated during childhood and via other social encounters.
These values are relative and vary per society and Nigeria despite it’s large and heterogeneous nature with over 200 tribes also has shared values which has helped shape the country into a somewhat single entity.
We are in 2018 and it’s 58 years since Nigeria gained independence in 1960 and people are wondering what has happened to moral and fashion decency, respect for elders and rules, hard work, diligence, humility, integrity, honesty amongst other values as the country has suffered a massive decline of morals and values over the years, leaving the country porous to all forms of socio-cultural laxity.
A great chunk of the cause of this growing lose of values, if not all of it, can be placed on cultural imperialism which is a brainchild of colonization and can loosely refer to the dominance of a stronger culture over a weaker one. It’s not entirely out of place to say western encounter has brought more trouble than peace to this country. Take RELIGION for example, Christianity and Islam came with the whites and while this does have it’s own advantages, it is important to note that a people’s religious belief is part of their culture and before the whites surfaced, different ethnic groups practiced various indigenous religious practices during the colonial era. The presence of two dominate ‘foreign’ religions has over time brought about a religious war of supremacy between both religions resulting in bloody clashes and lose of lives which might not have existed in the precolonial era.
Moving away from religion, one of the most disturbing change is the FASHION sense. It is said that the way a people dress defines them and every tribe in Nigeria embraces decent dressing. The fashion mindset of Nigerian youths has, over time become so infiltrated that we have watched the society grow from one where decent dressing was an unspoken norm, something one was aware of without necessarily been told, to one where indecent dressing has become a highly acclaimed norm. The strong desire to keep up with the ever fast growing fashion trends has pulled the current generation away from their dressing culture, therefore leaving us in a society that has lost touch with its dress sense.
While wondering what happened to our values, well meaning Nigerians are also asking where good home training has gone to? The Family is the smallest and most influential unit of every society, which brings us to CHILD REARING. Training a child is the duty of his or her parent(s)/guardian and since the family is a person’s very first point of contact, society in turn, simply contains children and adults as groomed from their homes. The traditional child rearing process was one which encouraged using the rod to train the child. Exposure and modernity has reshaped how children are raised, which is more inline with the ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ pattern as opposed to the type of training some of us attained while growing up.
Most modern day parents adopt the western pattern of raising a child, making modern child rearing a tad complicated. Most Children are pampered and overly protected by their parents and we wake up everyday to a society filled with disrespectful and undisciplined youths at the mercy of society and it’s Influences.
There is nothing wrong with loving one’s child. Loving one’s child is what makes one a remarkable parent but a child shouldn’t be allowed to move out of his home without knowing the basic etiquettes and core values. But, a good number of them are been sent into society with little or no moral value and you wonder why aside the need for survival, we have social vices? The other reason is lack of good moral upbringing.
Nothing happens in a vacuum and this cultural imperialism isn’t just working alone, it has a major agent, the INTERNET.
The internet is a brainchild of evolution, and has grown to become one of the strongest agent of socialization and exposure. Most new things are learnt via social media which in a very true sense can be said to be a part of the internet. Of course, before the internet and social media came into being, we already had the mainstream media such as Radio, Newspapers and Television which happens to be the most influential.
The impact of TV can never be underestimated. What is seen is much easier to adopt than what is read(newspaper) or heard(radio). So, people started trying to imitate what they saw on TV and with time, it moved from imitating it to actually living the life.
While, TV is more common amongst older Nigerians, the youths who are impossible to allows monitor, are more into the net and its accessories. Something that is becoming an addiction as most youths, literally spend 80% of their time online and spend the remaining 20% trying to recreate what they’ve seen online, which in most cases are contrary to their core values as Nigerians, therefore sending our values and norms further down the drains.
It would be improper to say evolution doesn’t have its upsides, it does but when the downside of a things overshadows it’s positives, then, there is a need for some quick action.
These value, despite their great deterioration can be revived. In all honesty, the journey to resorting and reviving Nigeria’s lost values would be a long and tedious ride, but a necessary and beneficial one in the end because, a society with out values can not stand. The county is crumbling because, it’s leadership has lost focus and value as well. We need to go back to our drawing board as a nation, reconnect with our values and start afresh.
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