THE EFFECT OF GLOBALIZATION ON NIGERIA CULTURE

Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationship of culture, people and economic activity. While culture on the other hand, is the recognition of good literature, enjoyment of good music, food and arts. According to Anthropologist Edward B. Taylor in his book, Primitive Culture, published in 1871.  Taylor said that culture is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society"(Taylor).

              Globalization has brought positive and negative effect. As an African I would say that globalization has more negative effect than positive on our culture. It has affected our language, the way we dress, respect for our elders and ultimately our environment. Irrespective of the above, there are some positive effect of globalization such as well-developed cities, sophisticated machineries and the ever changing/improving technologies

              According to World Council of churches “no culture is possible without a language. It is an important perquisites and therefore to kill the language is to kill culture”(World Council of Churches). I must say I far for Africa she is rapidly loosing its identity.  Nigeria is a good example. Without prejudice, Globalization is gradually killing our language as the younger generation find it hard to relate in their native dialect and as they put ; "it is obsolete /old school to communicate in that wired language" their native language. English, French, Spanish and Chinese is perceive as ultimate.

              I remember my mother would tell us of how rude we were. She would tell us of how when she was a child she’d ask her parent virtually everything and anything before she does them because of the fear and respect she has for her parent. Unlike, what we have in recent times were children tell their parents thing like "how dare you take my stuff" or "what do you mean i cant go out".  Children no longer sit around fireplace at night to listen to stories, as my mother would say. Stories, that promotes integrity, peace, unity, love, and values of respect. Rather they prefer watching late night movies or playing video game

              According to World council of churches “the youth prefer the western beats to the local artist. They also prefer hair styles, shoes and clothing of the western fashion scene”(World council of churches). Africans generally respect their bodies and believes that a woman who does otherwise has lost her self-respect or has no elderly person at home to caution her. We can see that because of globalization women walk almost naked and call it “fashion” Oh well!!!.

              Globalization has brought about great technologies, sophisticated machineries that make life easy ; the fact that i can do anything and everything from the comfort of my room is trilling "Especially going to school without even leaving the comfort of my house lol". But with this advancement comes problems. People are forced to live from hand to mouth because they use their salaries to buy these so called new invented machineries or items. The reason they do this is because nobody wants to be left behind. Everyone wants to go with “the flow”. Nobody wants to feel or be seen as outdated.

              The advancement in technology has not only damaged the physical environment with the emission a high percentage of carbon dioxide but it has also changed the temperature thereby causing Global Warming. Pollution, another product of globalization: our soil, water and air have been polluted and this causes genetic impact on individuals i.e when a gene is altered, it alters the physiology of that individual hence producing altered enzyme which ends up causing destructive diseases such as Alzheimer’s, brain dysfunction and all sort of scientific pronounced diseases we have. Even when globalization has been seen as good because it has prompted growth in developing countries, which has made humans life easier, its effect i will clearly states out weights the gain. My mother clearly stated that people lived long in those days than we have now. Days when everything was simple and organic.

              I therefore conclude that culture is a strong tool for human survival, it is constantly changing and can be easily lost because in recent times, it exists only in our minds.

OVERCOMING THE OBSTACLES TO WOMEN EDUCATION IN NIGERIA

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Education is the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life. Being an educated person means you have access to optimal states of mind regardless of the situation. One is able to perceive accurately, think clearly and act effectively to achieve self-selected goals and aspirations. In order words education is a process of cognitive cartography, mapping your experiences and finding a variety of reliable routes to optimal states when one is found in a non-optimal states. An educated woman understands her world well enough to deal with it effectively. Such women if they existed in sufficient numbers would not leave the absurdities of the present world unchanged. Education is an equalizer, i.e it brings about equality between the rich and the poor.

         So many ways have been propounded as means of improving a lot of women but the most important of these ways are: education, health and hygiene. Of these three education is the highest reason been that, it has been advocated that the education of girls is an excellent investment, as nothing else has such power to improve family health and also the lives of women themselves. In spite of these women have limited access to education when compared to men. However, it can be said therefore that the main focus of government education agenda is to bring about optimal development of its human resources, which, put in another words, is a viable source of human capital. This investment however will not be complete without women education. Women from time immemorial have been saddled with many family responsibilities and are traditionally assigned many roles including custody of children, maintenance of the home, feeding the family, and preservation of family health. Consequent upon those tradition role expectations, they become a significant factor in socio-economic and political development of a country. They forget that this obstacle has to be broken as a good and quality education will enable women improve their families health and diet, increase their productive ability, as well as enable them to discharge their responsibilities as mothers and wives in the family and society at large. The home ideally is the first and last school of a child and the foundation of his/her socialization with the mother serving as first teacher.  Information in Nigeria reveals that women constitute about half the total population of the country if not more than half and are also most vulnerable group to disease and economic frustration. This is not good and as such should be prevented. For example, the 1991 census of Nigeria, gave the proportion of women as 49.7 percent of the over-all national population with 70 percent of this group as illiterate.

         The problem of male /female disparity in access to education in Nigeria is not restricted to the primary school; rather it is almost the same for secondary and tertiary institution. For instance, according to National Universities Commission (UNC), National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) and National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), 1999 statistical data as cited by UNICEF (2001) it was revealed that out of a total number of about 500,000students that were admitted to tertiary institutions in Nigeria, female enrolment represented only 34 percent. The imbalance in the number of male and female enrolment is more pronounced in the polytechnics and in science and engineering disciplines in the universities (NUCHEP, 2004). Hence it could be inferred that a number of factor as well as some complicated and sensitive problems have various ways interacted to delay or frustrate women aspirations for education. This is not good and as such should be prevented. Women should be given equal opportunity as men to enable them achieve their goals in life.

         Provision of formal and functional education is needed for women, food, clothing etc. it would empower them to fight against every form of discrimination against their folks, assert themselves about their right to equal treatment with their men counterpart as bonafide citizens of this nation, Nigeria. It would enable women take decisions and accept responsibilities for taking such decisions concerning themselves. Another implication of the poor educational opportunity for women is involvement in low paying ventures. It has been noted by Oladunni (1999) that because of societal stereotype and stigmatization on certain professions and subject as the exclusive preserve of men and or women most Nigerian women have been forced into less paid jobs like teaching, nursing services, agriculture, small scale food processing, secretariat duties, clerical duties, note counting in banks, cleaners and middle level professional occupations. It was thus submitted that some of the effects of this is that majority of these women are poor and impoverished. Another implication of poor women education is that their lower access to education automatically denies them the opportunity and power of influencing significantly public policies and programs unlike male counterparts. Hence, it is very clear from the article that women education is limited and such should be avoided.

         In conclusion, it is clear in this article, that Nigerian women are educationally disadvantaged in terms of accessibility to formal education, participation in policy formulation and policy implementation especially in the education sector. It could be deduced that owing to our traditional socialization process, Nigerian women have been mislead into believing that aspiring for higher educational attainment is insignificant. After all, “women education ends in the kitchen”. Women should be given the opportunity to prove themselves and what they can do. Examples are Queen Amina, Dora Akunyili, Okonji Iwuala, Oprah Winfrey and many more. The problem against women education is many but they could be summarized under three major headings namely; restricted access to education, reluctant to aspire and resistance to women advancement within a patriarchal system.