Mr Sylvester Ogunkelu, member, Lagos State House of Assembly(Epe II), on Monday, July 31, 2023 called on youths to embrace indigenous cultures and respect traditions, to engender national development.
Ogunkelu made the call at the ongoing Kayokayo Festival in Epe. The News Agency of Nigeria(NAN) reports that the festival is celebrated annually to commemorate the historical arrival of King Kosoko Morounfolu Okunoye and his entourage to Epe in 1851, and to usher in the new Islamic calendar year.
The lawmaker said embracing and promoting indigenous cultures would help entrench cultural values and foster integration. While saying the festival is very important to the people of Epe ,Ogunkelu urged youths, especially those in the area, not to see indigenous cultures as inferior to western culture.
The lawmaker expressed concern that western culture was eroding indigenous cultures ,saying many Nigerians now prefer to dress , speak and behave like foreigners , abandoning local ways of life.
“Western culture has affected our own culture negatively, to the extent that we now do mainly what foreigners hand over to us ; we no longer see our own cultures and traditions as anything.
“A lot of youths now prefer to dress the western way , which is not a good idea.
“Our youths are no longer ready to speak our local languages ,be it Yoruba , Igbo or Hausa, and speaking local languages is one of the ways we can promote and preserve our cultures.
“When our youths are not even interested in anything that has to do with local languages, how will they think of preserving the indigenous culture?”, he said.
He said Kayokayo festival was a unifying factor for the people of Epe, and that it had promoted the peace and prosperity of the area .
The lawmaker added that the festival had become a veritable platform for the promotion of the local economy, and for finding solutions to some of the socio-economic challenges of the community.
”Most significantly, the festival propagates our rich culture, it is a platform for the promotion of peaceful co-existence of the people of the area” he said.