MODERN-DAY HOCUS-POCUS SOCIO-CULTURAL URBAN REGENERATION: IMPLICATIONS OF VALUE ORIENTATION, LIVABILITY AND SUSTAINABILITY

Nnabugwu Chizoba

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) sets its objectives as providing universal, primary education by the target date and year of 2015, which formed the blueprint and synopsis of global initiative on development and eradication of poverty agreed to by countries and the leading world development institutions. 

Education as an agent of transformation, human liberation and advancement is invested with the stimuli to create worthy structure to sharpen the coordinates of human dynamites: social, cultural, emotional and political reflexes.

Education, whether western, Christian, Arabic, or indigenous African component requires a weakening of the magnetic field of ignorance at various levels, with opportunity for revolutionary flips, improvement on social, economic, spiritual, cultural, organizational and collective well-being of people in the society. 

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The role of education includes facilitation, translation, conveyance and teaching of learnable conducts, doctrines, principles, ideologies, practices, and skills to which every human being is entitled to benefit and explore for the benefit of all in the society. The extent to which these have already happened is difficult to judge.

While the ability to read, white, and interpret things remain dominant, many challenges have occurred and together have the momentum to weaken our conception of education as a cultural progenitor.  

The proliferation of schools and methods of participatory teaching and learning, and widespread shifts of emphasis and changes in curricular and behaviour have not produced the desired MDG objectives. The modern day, hocus pocus has not led to exceptionally new discoveries in the field of industry, medicine, production, communication, mathematics, pharmaco-kinetics, avionics or agronomy.

Africa in general and Nigeria in particular are yet to bring the epidemics of diseases under firm control either medically or rationally, and neither have both culturalized industrialization to reduce over-exploitation of natural resources and adverse climatic conditions. African and Nigerians are still far from being an organic part of Africa’s primordial heritage; such as positive socio- political behaviours, and ethical values and followership.

The socio-economic, cultural and political landscape of the contemporary society have become the quintessence of frequent wars, clashes, extremities, fanaticism, discrimination, prejudice, pollution, apprehension, local slave trade, re-colonization and diverse obnoxious practices, such as child trafficking, human sacrifices and the practice of nudity and indecent exposure, which are now rife and common at various levels of the society.

Countries, regions and individuals are contributing to the quagmire of environmental degradation and squalor, domestic instability and imbalances in other forms of life.

Culture is necessary to all generations of men; to the poor and well endowed, to the governed and state operators. It is an essential and inseparable genetic code of all human dynamites. From Asia, the Americas, Africa, South Pacific, Caribbean, Europe, and Middle East to the United States, culture debuts as a body of stored knowledge, characteristic way of thinking and feeling, attitudes, goods and ideals that people in the society share in common. It includes the system of government, Engineering – Avionics, Aeronautics, Maritime, Space, Civil, Electrical, Petroleum, Fishing, transport, Sports and other capabilities and habits acquired by Man as a member of the society.

In Africa of today, our culture vilifies a sound societal evolution and growth with effective family orientation and conceptual best practices, domestic harmony and welfare.

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Africa’s real culture, is rich in human-value, domestic solidarity, entrepreneurship development, liberty of men and women, love for truth and honesty. Integrity in the administration of public trust and belief in retribution and responsibility characterize the African rich culture. It was defunct of arrogance in power, bribery, graft and nepotism. Worship of money, leadership crisis and lack of compassion for the common Man are strange, and indeed alien to Africa.

We must remind ourselves that our culture is today, battling with the influence of diverse foreign cultures leading to serious contamination, aesthetical disabilities, linguistic imbalance and losses in institutional currencies and family configuration. Our integrated value system and systematic institutions and norms that reinforce our collective co-operative set of true values, and potentials are also critically affected. 

The trademark that guides our behavior, provides roles, defines relations and exert control on our social heritage and responses to our biological environmental conditions and requirement is gradually grinding down. Other distinctive genius and fundamental ethos, value orientation and patterns are seriously confronted by systems of greed, corruption, roguery, and political thuggery and insensitivity.

The influences of foreign culture also induce disruption in social networking and natural balance leading to accelerating resource exhaustion and transformation of the biological build-up and the ability of the biosphere to support human existence. 

And because the imbalances brings about decline in food production, energy resources, water quality and human health; and because human existence and civilization depended upon the state and quality of the environment, it would seem appropriate to examine the works of development practitioners, population regulators, leaders of industry, institutions and policy makers and executers, which determine the health, right and privileges of citizens, economic facilitations and resource distribution.

And in another context, we advocate for development plans that place people and the planet at the center of policy options through the process of legislation, social re-engineering and cultural education, and pioneering a new approach to globalizing urban and rural networking, empowering people with tools and resources.

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