The Ligaments of Culture and Development in Nigeria

Culture is the totality of ways and manners people live their lives and make sense of their existences. These existences refer to total being to include spiritual, material, intellectual, emotional, environmental and even response to natural occurrences. Every group and society has cultures that constitute frameworks for their lives and behavioral patterns. Cultural factors affect economic behavior and this is usually, in at least four ways; through its impact on organization and production, attitudes towards consumption and work, the ability to create and manage institutions, and the creation of social networks. Hence, the social and economic performance of nations can only be best appreciated and explained against the background of the prevailing cultural domains. This also has bearing with the prevailing differences in subsisting institutions. Cultural trajectories affect policy formulations and implementations and how they drive growth and development. Social Scientists however sometimes conclude that cultures, especially in diversity, nearly automatically lead to instability and less-development, if not underdevelopment. This paper contends that culture is a force, very dynamic, lethal and is a driver of human growth and development. Against this background, this paper will engage issues that serve as undercurrents of the roles of culture in Nigeria’s development. The paper will also pragmatically explore the roles and undercurrents in manners that demonstrate how they have driven development in the past and how they could lead to development in the country at present and the future. Culture’s development threats and potentials for the nation will be demonstrated and how cultural forces and dynamics could be incorporated into theoretical and empirical models will be shown.