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Religion and Culture permeates the life of every human being as well as every society throughout the world. Every religion and culture has norms, values and acceptable standards reflected in its doctrines and ways of life. By inculcating in adherents and members of the society these norms and values, religion and culture are expected to act as agents for sustainable development in Nigeria. In-spite of this, Nigeria is facing problems of underdevelopment that are evidenced in the educational sector, social, political and economic deterioration. This paper therefore seeks to discover the reason for the lack of development and look at the various roles religion and culture can play in the sustainable development of Nigeria. The paper adopted phenomenological approach and discovered that, vices like corruption and materialism contributes largely to this underdevelopment and that religion and culture can play cardinal roles in growth of our society for sustainable development. The paper recommends that Religious leaders, Traditional rulers, Custodians of morality and Government at all levels should not isolate religion and culture to the background since the two could be found in every strata of the society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigated the local content programming and cultural imperialism in the Nigerian broadcast media with a view to determining the extent to which cultural imperialism influences radio and television stations in Nigeria local content programming and the impact of their programmes on the indigenous culture. The theories of cultural imperialism and cultivation Analysis were employed to underpin or support the study. A survey method was used to gather data for the study. Based on the empirical data obtained, it was revealed that broadcast stations in Nigeria are involved in local content programming but the extent is not significant as foreign programmes still take the lead in our broadcast stations. Even most of the programmes that are regarded as indigenous in our broadcast stations, are in most case, dominated by the content of foreign materials. This to a large extent has contributed to cultural imperialism as our indigenous programmes are in most cases relegated to the background even by the indigenous viewers. Findings also revealed that the reasons for this horrible and hideous situation is lack of finance for local programming, lack of digitalized equipment which constitutes poor quality programming and lack of austere monitoring by the NBC. The study concludes that broadcast media in Nigeria is still infantile as well as juvenile in terms of local content programming, thereby opening wider fissure for foreign programmes to fill in. The study recommends that the broadcast media in Nigeria should come back to the drawing board and pay keen attention to local programming as this is the only way our core values as a people and nation can be promoted. NBC must not relent in ensuring compliance and sanctioning violators of the local content provisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language is at the heart of literature, and Nigerian creative writers deploy the resources of language in intriguingly compelling ways to express their sociocultural realities. Among these linguistic strategies are proverbial and metaphorical expressions. However, studies on the novels of two prominent Nigerian novelists -- Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie -- have paid negligible attention to how these novelists' literary characters engage proverbs and metaphors as discourse strategies. This paper studies the discursive functionality of proverbial and metaphorical expressions as conversational strategies which the novelists' characters deploy in interactive situations to make their contributions align with the issue being discussed. The data for this paper were collected from four novels: Achebe's Things Fall Apart (henceforth TFA) and Anthills of the Savannah (henceforth AS) and Adichie's Purple Hibiscus (hereafter PH) and Half of a Yellow Sun (hereafter HYS). The analysis undertaken in this paper is guided by Braj Kachru's concentric theory, which delineates the use of English across the world. It is revealed that the novelists utilise proverbial and metaphorical expressions to articulate Igbo of south-eastern Nigeria cultural ways of interacting with social reality. This study contributes to extant studies on anthropolinguistics and literary studies. In so doing, the novelists insightfully exemplify how English words heave with the indigenous thoughts of their Igbo people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Culture is the very bedrock of a society, and in its entire dimension, is a fundamental component of national development. It is known generally as the total way of life of a people. The paper examines the role of cultural security in development in Nigeria. Using only secondary sources, it is emphasized here that cultural security plays an important role in development, cutting across the economic, political, social, environmental spheres. It brings about social cohesion, unity, peace and stability, progress and growth. It reduces poverty, provides employment opportunities and generates income inter alia. While the paper identified certain factors that militate against cultural security such as globalisation, conflict and violence, breakdown in cultural norms and values, lack of cultural intelligence, it reiterates the need to place culture at the core of governance. It also calls for a deliberate and conscious efforts of government at all levels to plan and implement policies and programmes that are culture-centred and culture-sensitive in order to promote cultural security and in turn engender national development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An Arts Council is established for the purpose of "preserving, promoting, propagating and fostering the arts and culture of their various states". Other aims of an Arts Council are to improve the knowledge, understanding and practice of the arts, and to make them more accessible to the public. Paradoxically, the Arts Council has been widely criticized by critics as the citadel of bureaucratic establishment art, whose objectives are too ill-defined to make evaluation possible. Most charges are those of being unrepresentative, undemocratic and irresponsible. The questions evolving from these are: how accessible is the arts to the public? Who does the Arts Council serve? Why do we have an Arts Council? In an attempt to answer these questions and others, the paper examines the trends in public and private support for government-owned cultural institutions. Particular reference is made to the Oyo State Council for Arts and Culture as a prototypical example of a government-owned cultural institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper on culture, religion and women's socio-economic needs in 2st century Nigeria explores the place of the woman through the two major religions in Nigeria: Christianity and Islam. The two religion s permit the woman to own or inherit certain properties either from their fathers or late husbands. A woman is even allowed to buy properties provided she has the means. However, culture restricts the woman from owning certain properties in Nigeria. When culture comes to play the woman is relegated to the background. The woman is only meant to be seen and not to be heard. In some Nigeria's custom sand traditions culture is often used as a tool for justifying the violations of women's rights especially in the areas of marriage and property, reflecting deepseated patriarchal structures and harmful gender stereotypes. The paper is anchored on Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Abraham Maslow as a renowned researcher in the study of human needs and motivation, came up with his famous hierarchy of needs theory with a proposal that people are motivated by five levels of needs namely: (1) Physiological needs (2) Safety needs (3) Love and belonging needs (4) Esteem and prestige needs (5) Self-actualization needs. Two additional levels of needs namely: (6) Understanding needs and (7) Aesthetic needs were later included in Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The focus of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs is now on motivation of people by seven (7) levels of needs in human environment. The emphasis on Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs is that there are certain basic needs which must be met before other needs can, indeed, be considered in human environment, especially in the case of women in Nigeria. Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs further focuses on exploration of human desire to address people's needs in order to improve their living conditions in human environment. No man is an island unto himself in Nigeria. Social groupings, associations, affiliations and belongings which are based on love are needed to enhance harmonious human co-existence in both genders. This gives people the courage and confidence to contribute or stand up to women's needs to improve their living conditions. This paper helps to equip the place of women's in Nigeria with a better understanding of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs and its application to real life situations of needs among women in Nigeria. The paper reveals that, culturally, women are viewed as inferior to men, and a male-child is generally celebrated and allotted higher portions of properties. However, the tenets of both Islam and Christianity do not disregard the woman in terms of right to own properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sought to x-ray the role of culture in Upper Basic Education Social Studies curriculum development in Nigerian schools. The objectives of the research were; to explain the concepts of culture, Social Studies, Curriculum and Curriculum development; the objectives of Social Studies; the components of culture; cultural determinants of social studies curriculum content in Nigerian schools as well as to examine the factors influencing social studies curriculum development which include the learner, the teacher, the society (culture), philosophy of education and psychology of learning. However, the paper revealed that curriculum is the planned skills, attitudes, values and knowledge offered by the learner with an explicit goal of changing his behavior in order to become a functional and active member of the society. It also indicated that a well-coordinated and planned curriculum must be a true reflection of the society's culture where it is expected to function. The paper further revealed that the process of planning and developing a Social Studies curriculum is a strenuous journey for any society and requires a whole-system approach before it can be completed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history and culture of the Caribbean are inextricably linked to landscape. Memories of Caribbean history as a kind of Caribbean consciousness is developed through discourse in which "imagined geographies" deplore a sense of a connect between regional and temporal space, with a sense of the sublimity of the cultures. The context of landscape in Caribbean discourse created an aesthetic that initiated a seamless unity between society, history and culture. The vision of the New World as perpetually tied to historical times is the concern of Derek Walcott and other Caribbean writers. The idea that the landscape has mythical presence, historical associations and elemental connotations which became part of the Caribbean consciousness, and the bases for the definition of the Caribbean man is the idea captured by Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, etc. Landscape in this work connotes the cultural, psychological and socio-political and historical elements. This affirmative vision of the landscape imbued with history; the sense of that feeling for the land, and a responsiveness to its history can be a meaningful way of rooting oneself, and of acquiring an identity. Derek Walcott comes to terms with this issue of history and memory of the ancestral past in Caribbean historiography. This sense of history in the Caribbean world-view of Walcott's poetic universe emphasizes exploration of the self and landscape, especially in his earliest collection - juvenilia - of 25 Poems (1948). This visionary inquest in Derek Walcott's select poems is what this paper sets to interrogate. This study adopts the Eco-critical theory in the analysis of the studied poems. This theory establishes the relationship between the environment and man and the connect between the socio-cultural in a literary text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]