How Our Cultural Norms Can Be Sustained

“The nation’s cultural heritage can only be preserved if parents will nurture up their children to appreciate indigenous languages such as Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo.”

This was the assertion of the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs and Culture, Mrs. Doyin Olusoga, at a public lecture to mark this year’s World Culture Day organised by the Lagos State Council for Arts and Culture.

She emphasised that sound education of “our mother’s tongue for children should be encouraged,” instead of embracing the western culture at all time.

Olusoga stated that parents should be held responsible if the nation’s cultural heritage should fail, saying, “we must uphold culture and tradition and norms of the Nigerian society,” while urging parents to teach their children to value our culture and norms in preference to the Western culture.

The guest lecturer, Dr. Abimbola Ayinde from the University of Lagos, who spoke on African Traditional Religion, emphasised on the worship of deities of the Yoruba heritage.

According to him, the African religion could not be eroded by Western religion such as Christianity and Islam, because the traditionalists were fully committed to their beliefs.

He added that despite the white man’s decorated religion, they still could not prevail on the people’s belief of their ancestral religions.

“As long as man continues to reproduce, the African religion can never die, except people die; the Yoruba generation will still preserve and promote their deities,” he stated.