Nigeria's Core Values and the Use of Social Media to Promote Cultural Values

This article examines how Nigeria’s core values are being redefined in the face of the new media and cultural globalisation era; it identifies Nigeria’s core values to include age, greeting, dressing, among others. The questionnaire was used as an instrument to elicit data from the sampled population (Jos South Local Government Area of Plateau State). Findings show that the Internet, especially, is changing Nigeria’s core values. Based on the findings, the paper concludes that Nigerians, especially the youths no longer have regards for their culture; rather, they value foreign culture. Also, the paper concludes that globalisation and global culture is gradually eroding Nigeria’s core values as people no longer have regards for their local culture; rather they value the foreign culture. The paper, among others, recommends that the media in Nigeria should adequately transmit local programmes in order to genuinely reflect indigenous culture. The media no doubt, plays a significant role in projecting and reflecting culture. In doing so, indigenous culture should be adequately reflected through sufficient airing of programmes with local content to prevent dominance of Western values over indigenous values and the local languages be instituted in Nigerian school system and monitored to ensure local dialects are learnt and spoken. In this way, the youths will learn to attach value to their culture right from their formative years. Ezekiel S. Asemah Kogi State University, Nigeria Daniel O. Ekhareafo University of Benin, Nigeria Samuel Olaniran Plateau State University, Nigeria DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-6114-1.ch044