MY COMMUNITY

I come from Umunede, a conspicuous town in Ika Nation,Delta state,Nigeria with over a population of 22,611 (as at over 1991 Natuonal Population Census Figure). Umunede is no longer the traditional society it was one hundred years ago, when it was controlled and governed by ancestral spirits and cultural legends which underlined a mystical convertism in all espects of the community life. This is because between the past and the present is the phenomenon of change. The problem with change in any human community is that ot usually affects the identity and way of life of the people, not just human both animals and plants. And since development involves change, then we have a socio-cultural problem on our hands because the bewildering results induced by developmental transformations make development and constancy incompatible

Since change is inevitable and a lot of it has taken place in Umunede, it is necessary to recognize the catalytic impact of this change on the identity of our people at home and in diaspora. The first thing to note is that our children born and nurtured outside Umunede now form a generation of influential men and women who are very ignorant of where they are coming from. Even the children born in Umunede in the?1980’s will by the year 2040, be as uninformed as the other group and therefore, both of them will have nothing of our cultural heritage to leave behind for their children and grandchildren.

Through the help of the British who colonized Nigeria, we were introduced to mordernization. For instance, it is very clear that moonlight stories as told by parents in the courtyard to their children and their folklores recounted by elders in the warmth of their fire side has been completely replaced by Cable Television programmes and foreign videos which have no bearing on our cultural past. Meanwhile, significant re-socialization and re-culturalization processes have gradually taken over our various homes, quietly strangling and suffocating our traditional values and institutions.

In addition to these, the extended family system that was the binding force in the community has suffered set- backs because most families no longer occupy one house or adjacent buildings but homes that are kilometers apart in the same town.Kingship obligations have not ended, but they have become less attractive, less binding and highly reduced in quality. Most of the powers of the community elders and leaders have been taken over by other forms of authorities. The Police, the Customary courts and the Magistrate courts are increasingly over-shadowing known traditional conflict resolution mechanisms.

The sum total of these changes is that they have generated huge strains in Umunede community life which have undermined our cultural heritage and so, on another thirty to forty years from now a new breed of Umunede adults who can not speak their local dialect, the Umunde language, who have been properly indoctrinated in alien cultural values and who are qualitatively different from those we now know, will emerge. This is bound to have major consequences on attitudinal orientation and this obviously will be antagonistic to our known way of life.

It is true that the 2006 census figures revealed that Umunede was still a closed agrarian community but the reality on the ground is that over 60% of males aged between 21 to 45 years who are resident in the town are working full time for wages as commercial motorcycle riders,as chauffeurs,as motorcycle and car spare-parts dealers, and as any other type of worker that you can imagine, but not as a farmer. Again, it is true that the rapid urbanization of Umunede is concentrated on the New Road arean of the town because the opportunities for increased wages earnings and wealth creation are more there but these processes or movements clearly reflects the fact that our youths are not entering the farming business.

As a resultof this,there has been a modification of the farming job description and the adoption of that modified version of farming. And so few youth who fatm do so as part time farmers. The obvious result of this is that, over the years fewer and fewer youths join the farming business and so the farming population in the town is fast depleting with the exit of the aged farmer

Now, i want you to tell me, Do you thing mordernization and Change in the Umunede community did us more harm than good? I will be at the comment section.