Creativity and Culture: Nigerian Conceptions

Abstract

Creativity is an inevitable phenomenon resulting in people’s need to solve their problems. This phenomenon is captured differently by each culture’s values and beliefs. Though Western conceptions of creativity dominate literature with an impressive contribution from Eastern cultural conceptions, African conceptions of creativity seem to be obscure. This article uses the three dominant Nigerian cultures namely Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba to underscore the relationship between culture and creativity. It contends that any concept of creativity is reflective of a people’s cultural viewpoint. While communal and religious interpretations of the association are traditionally Nigerian, there is, however, a contemporary dimension to the Nigerian concept of creativity which is also Western in outlook. The result is an amalgam of the traditional Nigerian and Western conceptions of creativity in one socio-cultural setting called Nigeria. However, the fusion of these two cultural concepts does not rob the traditional Nigerian notions of creativity the enduring traits of what other cultures understand to be creative. Consequently, if the various cultural understandings of creativity have all led to growth and development in their different cultural settings, it behooves multiple stakeholders of the Nigerian society the duty and responsibility of promoting the prevailing conceptions of creativity from their cultural backdrop for the growth and development of the Nigerian experience.