SOCIAL CULTURAL FACTORS THAT MAKE NIGERIA A LESS DEVELOPED COUNTRY.

1. Discrimination:
Sometimes there are social or cultural factors that hold back Nigeria. Discrimination is one of these. If there are certain people groups that are discriminated against, the country’s overall productivity can suffer. This may be a tribe, a caste, a racial category or minority language group. In Nigeria a high level of discrimination exist which has hindered Nigeria’s development. These include: I) RELIGION: in Nigeria a major religious discrimination is that between the Christians and Muslims. Every day crises in different parts of the country most especially in the north, Christians are killed every day, bombs are planted in places of worship which destroys structures, leads to land, air, and water pollution; all these are as a result of difference in belief and doctrines. All these hinder the development of Nigeria as a country. II) ETHNIC GROUPS: Nigeria as a country is blessed with different ethnic groups which incorporates different cultures. The difference in language, cultures and beliefs leads to discrimination. III) SOCIAL STATUS: in Nigeria the discrimination between the rich and the poor ones has been one of the major cause of discrimination, the rich don’t always want to associate with the poor talk less of helping the poor, therefore the rich will remain richer while the poor will continue to be poor when this happens there would be an extreme case of continuous poverty which will hinder development in the country.

2. Population:
Closely linked to this is the population issue. If women see staying at home and bringing up children as their chief role, they will have more children than those who work. There is nothing wrong with having lots of children, as long as you can provide for them. Jeffrey Sachs again: ‘With fewer children, a poor household can invest more in the health and education of each child, thereby equipping the next generation with the health, nutrition, and education that can lift living standards in future years.’ Nigeria is highly populated with about 150 million people. As a result of unemployment, jobless men and women keep making babies which keep increasing the population and the available resources are insufficient for the population as a whole. This makes them to keep using and depleting the few available resources. As the population swells and puts pressure on diminishing resources, escalating environmental problems further threaten food production. Land degradation as a result of extensive agriculture, deforestation and overgrazing is already severe in many parts of the country.

3. Culture:
The beliefs of most people hinders development in the sense that if a certain form of development is brought to people whose belief contradicts the intending development, they would refuse to accept such development because they believe that development would eliminate the norms of their fore fathers.

4. General poverty: The existence of poverty in Nigeria is one of the major hindrances to development Poverty is especially severe in rural areas, where up to 80 per cent of the population live below the poverty line and social services and infrastructure are limited. The country’s poor rural women and men depend on agriculture for food and income. About 90 per cent of Nigeria’s food is produced by small-scale farmers who cultivate small plots of land and depend on rainfall rather than irrigation systems. Surveys show that 44 per cent of male farmers and 72 per cent of female farmers across the country cultivate less than1 hectare of land per household. Women play a major role in the production, processing and marketing of food crops. The poorest groups eke out a subsistence living but often go short of food, particularly during the pre-harvest period. The productivity of the rural population is also hindered by ill health, particularly HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. 5. Underdeveloped Natural Resources:
The natural resources of Nigeria are underdeveloped in the sense that they are unutilized, underutilized or misutilized. A country may be deficient in natural resources, but it cannot be so in the absolute sense. Although a country may be poor in resources, it is possible that in the future it may become rich in resources as a result of the discovery of presently unknown resources or because new uses may be found for the known resources. Thus instead of saying that Nigeria is absolutely deficient in natural resources, it is more appropriate to say that they have not been successful in overcoming the scarcity of natural resources by appropriate changes in technology and social and economic organization.
Thus underdeveloped countries do possess resources but they remain unutilized, underutilized or misutilized due to various inhibitions such as their inaccessibility, lack of technical knowledge, non-availability of capital and the small extent of the market. For instance, agricultural sector in Nigeria has been neglected for crude oil sector. Resources in that sector have been underdeveloped. In time past agriculture was used in the development of Lagos, but because it has been neglected, the development in the country has suffered a major setback. The major export of agriculture which was cocoa, rubber, etc. are under-utilized as a result of the neglect of the sector for the oil sector.

6. Unemployment and disguised unemployment:
In underdeveloped countries there is vast open unemployment and disguised unemployment. The unemployment is spreading with urbanization and the spread of education. But the industrial sector has failed to expand along with the growth of labour force thereby increasing urban unemployment. Then there are the educated unemployed who fail to get jobs due to structural rigidities and the lack of manpower planning.
But underdevelopment or disguised or concealed unemployment is a notable feature of underdeveloped countries. Such unemployment is not voluntary but involuntary. Such unemployment is found among rural landless and small farmers due to the seasonal nature of farm operations and inefficient land and equipment to keep them fully employed.
There are also other types of underemployed persons in such countries. A person is considered to be underemployed if he is forced by unemployment to take a job that he thinks is not adequate for his purpose, or not commensurate with his training. Open and disguised unemployed in urban and rural areas are estimated at 30-35 percent of the labour force in low developed countries 7. Economic backwardness:
In underdeveloped countries, particular manifestations of economic backwardness are low labour efficiency, factor immobility, and limited specialization in occupation and in trade, economic ignorance, values and social structure that minimize the incentive for economic change.
The basic cause of backwardness is to be found in low labour productivity as compared with the developed countries. This low labour efficiency results from the general poverty which is reflected in low nutritional standards, ill health, illiteracy and lack of training and occupational mobility.
According to Stephen Enke, underdeveloped countries have what might be termed “an uneconomic culture”. Primarily, this means that traditional attitudes discourage the full utilization of human resources. In underdeveloped countries, people are mostly illiterate, ignorant, conservative, superstitious and fatalists. Poverty in such countries is abysmal, but it is considered to be God-given, something preordained. 8. Agriculture, the main Occupation:
In underdeveloped countries, two-thirds or more of the people live in rural areas and their main occupation is agriculture. There are four times as many people occupied in agriculture in some underdeveloped countries as there are in advanced countries. In low-income countries like China, Kenya, Vietnam and Myanmar, more than 71 percent of the population is engaged in agriculture while the percentages for the United States, Canada and West Germany are 3, 3 and 4 respectively. This heavy concentration in agriculture is a synonym of poverty.
Such countries mainly specialize in the production of raw materials and foodstuffs, yet some also specialize in non-agriculture primary production, i.e., minerals. An underdeveloped country is thus a primary sector economy. Besides the primary sector there is the underdeveloped secondary sector with a few simple, light and small consumer goods industries and an equally underdeveloped tertiary sector, i.e., transport, commerce, banking and insurance services.
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9. Technological backwardness:
Underdeveloped countries are also in the backward state of technology. Their technological backwardness is reflected, firstly, in high average cost of production despite low money wages; secondly, in high labour-output and capital-output ratios as a rule, and on the average, given constant factor prices thus reflecting a generally low productivity of labour and capital; thirdly, in the predominance of unskilled and of trained workers; and lastly, in the large amount of capital equipment required to produce a national output.
This technological backwardness is due to technological dualism which implies the use of different production functions in the advanced sector and the traditional sector of the economy. The existence of such dualism has accentuated the problem of structural or technological unemployment in the industrial sector and disguised unemployment in the rural sector. This technological unemployment arises from mal-allocation of resources, the structure of demand and technological restraints. 10. Lack of enterprise and initiative:
Another characteristic which possess Nigeria as an underdeveloped country is the lack of entrepreneurial ability. Entrepreneurship is inhibited by the social system which denies opportunities for creative faculties. Besides, there exist a few entrepreneurs who are engaged in the manufacture of some consumer goods, and in plantations and mines that attend to become monopolistic and quasi-monopolistic. They develop privileged position, and receive preferential treatment in finance, taxation, exports, imports, etc.
The thin supply of entrepreneurs in such countries is also attributed to the lack of infrastructural facilities which add to the risk and uncertainty of new entrepreneurship. Further, entrepreneurship is hindered by technological backwardness in underdeveloped countries. This reduces output per man and the products are of substandard quality. Mostly, they have to depend upon imported capital-intensive techniques which do not fit in their factors endowment.