Conflict of cultures and the need to check negative cultural dynamism in Nigeria

Abstract

Colonialism provided the West the opportunity to introduce their culture into Africa. In Nigeria, the British introduced their culture through education and religion. The resultant interplay between the existing Nigerian indigenous culture and the British imposed Western culture is what is referred to as the conflict of cultures. The culture of a people lives with the people. Like every living thing, culture changes. The changing of culture or cultural dynamism is either negative or positive. Nigerian culture faces negative dynamism in many spheres of life. Using analytic and hermeneutic methods, this paper stressed the need to check negative cultural dynamism in Nigeria. The thesis of this paper is that not only has it become fashionable in Nigeria to do things the European or American way, but worse still, it has become fashionable not to do things the African way. The paper concluded that Africans or Nigerians should retain aspects of their culture that are good and change only those aspects that are bad. In other words, they should imbibe the spirit of positive cultural dynamism and eschew the negative.