Promoting Cultural and Social Values in Yoruba Nollywood Movies

Introduction/Problem Statement Culture is the sum total of the attainments of any specific period, race or people including their handicrafts, agriculture, economics, music, arts, religious beliefs, traditions, language and story. These attainments are guided by principles and values of such society or race. Hence, pre-colonial African society has a social value system with shared principles and standards of living which account for the stability of social order and provide the general guidelines for social conduct such as fundamental rights, patriotism, respect for human dignity, rationality, sacrifice, individuality, equality, democracy and so on that guide their behaviour in many ways. These values are the criteria they use in assessing their daily lives; arranging their priorities and choosing between alternative courses of action. However, these traditional societies were peaceful despite the different Kingdoms that existed irrespective of their cultural and social values. This could be attributed to the strong adherence to social and cultural values in place. The Yoruba people under this study constitute one of the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria and occupy a large part of the south western part of the country with greater percentage located in Ekiti, Lagos, Ondo, Ogun, Osun, and Oyo States, while some occupy parts of Kogi and Kwara States (Olufayo and Jegede, 2014:52) The Yoruba traditional society is culturally endowed in all spheres of the societal structures which are guided by social values which seem to be the bedrock of their culture. These social values cover every range of values such as religion, economics, and politics, moral and so on. The Yoruba social values like all African social values are humanistic; hence this makes them remain unshakable irrespective of the invasion of the foreign values. The attributes of the Yoruba social values include a sense of good human relations, a sense of community, a sense of hospitality, a sense of respect for authority and elders, a sense of extended family and a sense of religiosity which signifies the attributes of African social values as presented by Kanu(2011) cited in Olufayo and Jegede, 2014:52). Within the Yoruba indigenous communities, hardwork which was highly esteemed is inculcated through socialization process and societal norms and values were communicated through indigenous music, myth, artistic display, folklores, taboos, poetry, dramas and currently in various themes in their movies. The Yoruba movies with background of travelling theatre groups were the contributors to the evolution of an indigenous cinema in Nigeria. Their producers are Ola Balogun, Eddie Ugbomah, Adeyemi Afolayan, a.k. a Ade Love, Late Hubert Ogunde, Adebayo Salami, Moses Adejumo and Afolabi Adesanya. Some of their productions made a debut with Ogunde's "Aiye" in 1979 and "Jaiyesinmi" in 1980. With the advent of more movies producers, most of these productions showcase Yoruba cultural values, heritage and traditions which attracted millions of viewers. Recent developments in Yoruba movies production and in packaging movies on CD and DVD have further increased themes, competition and audience patronage of these movies. Nsika-Abasi& Tom (2013: 77) showed that most adolescents spend the greatest part of their time watching videos and movies. They also spend quite a long time in browsing, downloading, chatting and watching movies on the Internet. However, recent developments in Nigeria also have caused a major set-back to the social development, political stability, cultural development and family integration which have affected the people's value system. Many people including the Yoruba race have lost their moral compass while greed is the overriding principles governing the culture and behavioural pattern among the people (Ogunleye, 2013). This degrading of values system is contrary to the pre-colonial value system operating among the Yoruba. …