JOURNALS

ABSTRACT

This article attempts an objective assessment of the influence of western education on African cultural values, with focus on Nigeria. It undertakes an exploratory tour of the colonial administration era in Nigeria, especially the latter’s adoption of education, trade and religion as strong strategies to perpetuate its administration. The study examined the attendant socio-developmental effects, namely: the abandonment of the African cultural values, by tracing the remote causes of the subject-matter on the African continent and Nigeria in particular. The paper specifically focused on an examination of some of the cultural values of the Yoruba people of the southwestern Nigeria, such as: respect for the old and elderly, co-habitation, inter-personal relationship, good neighbourliness, collective responsibility, dressing, language, hospitality, chastity before marriage, seen to have been among others, are serially eroded for foreign ones, robbing the continent of its development; and interrogates how some of these values could be recalled to serve as panacea to the country’s present hydra-headed social, moral and ethical challenges to engender relative sustainable development. The study utilised both primary and secondary sources of data gathering and used simple descriptive analysis and inferential statistics to analyse them. The study, being explorative in nature, adopted the surveytype methodology and used the sustainable development theory as its theoretical framework to explore the rationale behind western education influences on Africa’s cultural values in the face of supposed development on the African continent amidst its cultural values’ sustainability. The study findings revealed that, the goals of western education, inter-alia, are not achieving desired social balance. The article concluded that, whereas education, religion among other European influences are essentially major agents of socialisation and development, they however cannot achieve this outside of due consideration for the way of life of the people and values which, promoted morality, integrity, ethical balance and even development.