Impact of culture, religion on development

OLUSEGUN Obasanjo’s 78th birthday was marked by a series of week-long events. An arm of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, The Centre for Human Security (with Prof Akin Mabogunje as Chairman and Prof Peter Okebukola as Director) held a National Colloquium on “An Agenda for Nigeria’s Developmental Future.” Retired General Martin Luther Agwai (then Chairman of SURE-P) delivered a paper on Security and Development. Dr. Umar Bindir, Director-General of National Office for Technology Acquisition and Transfer (NOTAP) spoke on his area of expertise.

Sitting in the audience, my mind went back to African Leadership Forum’s Otta Farmhouse Dialogues. I wondered, how, in the contemporary human experience on earth in these times, we did not have a speaker on the effect of Culture and Religion on development. Accordingly, let us draw from archives of the recent past. We may then realize that the cerebral part of Obasanjo has been at it for a long time, providing a platform for the intellectual input for policy of development.

On Monday, September 28, 1998, a conference opened on the subject of “Culture in Sustainable Development,” on the Ground Floor of the World Bank’s Main Complex building in Washington. I was invited thither by my good friend from our involvement in Nigeria’s Road Reform Initiative, Dieter Schelling. In the foyer, there was a display of publications from previous conferences on the same theme. I found the very idea of the bank sponsoring a discourse on culture very intriguing. I was allowed to take any of the publications. It was also a welcome development that the much-dreaded word “spirituality” was being touted in the leading development financial institution in the world. It turned out to be an education for one trained in the economics of development.

One of the books I selected was “Ethics and Spiritual Values; Promoting Environmentally Sustainable Development,” edited by Ismail Serogeldin and Richard Barrett. It contained the proceedings of a seminar held in October 1995, sponsored by the World Bank, the Centre for Respect for Life and Environment, and the World Bank Spiritual Unfoldment Society. I was immediately drawn to the voluminous book on a 1992 Conference on “Culture and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa,” edited by Serageldin and June Taboroff. Nigeria featured prominently in it. Dr. Ladipo Adamolekun, formerly of the Obafemi Awolowo University, and Dr. (Mrs) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and Prof Wole Soyinka, had contributions. Soyinka had a paper on “Culture, Memory and Development,” which dealt with the tributaries of culture, including religion.

One aspect of Soyinka’s contribution was the issue of western expectations of what constituted African culture: “Where are the grass skirts? Is a question which even when it remains unuttered, lurks beneath the reception accorded a cultural event by the beholder from western cultures, or a seeker of leisure in tropical climes.” Next, he recalled the citation for his 1988 induction into the Fellowship of an Academy of Sciences in a western country. He recounted how he was “startled” to hear his works summarized as expressing “in the vernacular English of his native country the folklore of that country.”

His indignation is typical of all of us who, despite having spoken English all our life, are still required to take the test of English as a foreign language. The truth is that no matter how proficient we might be in it, English is still a foreign language to us. Raised in indigenous languages that are anchored on true experiences in life, we have problems with vague expressions like “opinions” when it comes to the basic questions of existence: birth, death, and the purpose of existence.

When we use the word culture, what does it convey to us? Traditions and customs come closer to our perceptions. Culture has one of the longest definitions in the dictionary. One stated that it “is the quality of enlightenment and refinement arising from an acquaintance with and concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, the sum total of the ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.” Thus a person can be described as being cultured. Custom is a habitual way of acting in given circumstances.

Tradition is the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, by word of mouth and practice.

The World Bank had adopted the definition of culture agreed upon at the 1982 World Conference on Cultural Policies, held in Mexico City. Called Mondiacult, it defined culture as “the whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterize a society or social group. It includes not only the arts and letters, but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human being, value system, traditions and beliefs.”

Soyinka added the dimension of man’s relation to his environment and to the other institutions of his society, defining “the spiritual dimension of man, and therefore religion,” as culture-bound. This introduced the matter of religious culture, and the peculiar observation of an alien religion blending with the cultural elements of the local environment. “The invading religion, which makes strenuous efforts to extirpate those cultural manifestations it considers hostile to total submission, resorts to measures that only further alienate the cultural determinism of the indigenes. The enforced change of names for example, remains part of the superficies in most cases.”

Furthermore, Soyinka drew upon the outcome of the African Leadership Forum’s “Farm House Dialogue on Religious Pluralism and Democracy,” held in Otta, Nigeria on December 6-8, 1991. That seminar boldly posed the question on “where in the human make-up religious pre-occupation is located. “Is it the head, or intellect, the mind or heart, or the body?” The answer was that “it was a matter of faith, and therefore in the mind.” The Dialogue concluded that “until cognizance is taken of the need to place religion in its proper place, Nigeria cannot expect to seriously resolve the myriad of societal problems confronting it.” One unnamed participant at the Otta discourse stated flatly that “whatever else society might need, it certainly is not (more) religion. What society needs is truth. Anything else is a puerile and further diversion. The main effort is to gear up towards liberating society from religion.” Soyinka promptly added that his position was not that extreme, but he too agreed that religion must be placed in its proper place, a task he described as “a legitimate undertaking, even an imperative in the context of culture and development.”

Soyinka also made reference to an article in the Daily Times, in which G. G. Darah, revealed “the difficulties encountered in discussing development, because the word attracts to itself, through a tradition of socio-political usage, considerations of material development near-exclusively.” We all know the categorization of the world into developed, developing and under-developed nations, based on the criteria of industrialization, telecommunications, and technology. Darah substituted “enhancement” for “development.” Soyinka described this as an inevitable compromise from an attempt to find a common ground between culture and development.

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (The World Bank) was established to help in the development of infrastructure of the under-developed countries, in all fields, including education. Experience taught it the crucial importance of the human factor in the cultural environment. In some of the developed countries, they now have a generation seemingly bent on destroying the infrastructure painstakingly built up over the years.

Their anti-establishment activities are evident in graffiti on public transportation, or the deliberate throwing of chewing gum waste on road sidewalks, degrading the aesthetics of their cities. With the ban on smoking in public structures in America, many smokers now gather at building entrances to smoke, after which they throw the cigarette butts right on the pavement in front of lofty skyscrapers. This is also a fire hazard.

Yes, we have the physical structures in Africa, Asia, Europe, or the Americas but must come back to the ubiquitous human material everywhere. It is remarkable that it was out of Nigeria that the concept of the ennoblement of the human being was given expression. G. G. Darah’s contribution of “enhancement” is timely. The World Bank has come to recognize the importance of culture in the development process. Wole Soyinka took the matter further, by dissecting culture into its component parts, and courageously removing the lid on “man’s pre-occupation with religion.” Despite its strong grip on the minds of many human beings, we do not truly understand the meaning of religion. Like many other expressions, each person may have to go back to find the equivalent meaning in his native language.

One African language group, Yoruba, has an expression in its linguistic treasure; the word “iwalesin.” It means that conduct is religion, and religion is conduct. It could be that every language contains the recognition of this truth. This being so, G. G. Darah’s terminology of enhancement provides a valid goal for the progressive refining of men and women, as a mission concept for the World Bank in the years to come. For this goal, that lone voice among the participants in the 1991 Otta Farmhouse Dialogue gave mankind a treasure when he said what was needed is truth. That is what all mediated teachings convey, but which men have turned into earthly religions. To anyone who recognizes the importance of this matter, and subsequently devotes the time to examine each sacred teaching, the difference between original sacred teachings and subsequent human practices will be quite clear.

What is the truth that society needs? Culture concerns the way of life of a people, their views about existence, birth, death, how they raise their children, organize their societies, and how they bury the remains of their departed. The late Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Mammerskjold, captured this when he said, “If we go to the root of the matter, it is our concept of death that decides our answers to all the questions which life poses.”

• Akindele is a Visiting Member of The Guardian Editorial Board.