The Chairman, Senate Committee on Culture and Tourism, Senator Rochas Okorocha has said that election rigging and corruption which has bedeviled Nigeria’s political space are not part of our heritage, but a borrowed culture.
The former Imo State governor who was speaking as a guest at the Annual Distinguished Lecture organized by the National Gallery of Arts, challenged Nigerians to be proud of our cultural heritage and languages, saying that “we cannot exchange our God given cultures for any other culture, no matter how sophisticated it might be.”
Reeling out some of the ways that culture can serve in helping us solve our problems as a nation, Senator Okorocha pointed out that some of our problems as a nation persist because we are deploying; “foreign or American-styled strategies in tackling issues that could have been more effectively tackled through our local and cultural methods.”
Okorocha recommended cultural remedies to tackling the issues of corruption among public officials, insecurity, as well as electoral malpractices. He argued that no matter the diversity of our cultures and traditions, every Nigerian culture frowns at corruption, election rigging and other vices.
According to him; “Corruption is not in our culture, election rigging is against every Nigerian culture and practices. They are borrowed cultures which we must discard in order to move our nation forward.
“It appears that public officials no longer have respect for our Holy Books; the Bible and Qur’an, that is why some public officials could still go ahead to betray their oaths of office, after swearing with the Bible or Qur’an. I think that if we begin to use some cultural totems to administer oaths on public officials, incidents of corruption and abuse of public office would drastically be reduced.
“Our various cultures prohibit corruption and all kinds of vices that are rampant in our body polity. For instance, if we engage cultural methods in fighting electoral malpractices, election rigging will reduce. Because the people naturally would respect the custodians of our culture than they may tend to respect the police, inec and other officials.”
Okorocha also pointed out that the successes he recorded in tackling the menace of kidnapping and other violent crimes in Imo State, during his time as governor, was conscious engagement and partnership with the traditional institutions, which involved making traditional rulers the chief security officers of their different domains.
The event which had the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Muhammed, also had other notable guests, including the Chairman of the Nassarawa State Council of Chiefs, HRH Hon. Justice Sidi Bags Muhammad I; the chairman, House Committee on Culture and Tourism, Hon. Omoregie Ogbeide-Ihama; the Chairman of the Board of NGA, Alhaji Umaru Azores Sulaiman; the Distinguished Guest Lecturer, Professor Jerry Buhari and a host of other distinguished attendees from the arts, entertainment and cultural sectors.
