Nigeria: is one cultural dimension enough?

Author:  Iloka Benneth Chiemelie

Published: 1st of June 2014

Mitchell A. Orenstein (2012) made known that Nigeria is ethnically diverse in culture with over 250 ethnic group an each of these ethnic groups have distinctive cultural heritage. So how can you group such a huge level of diversity into one framework? This is definitely difficult even for Hofstede because these diversities brings about limitations to any given framework that attempts to group all these ethnic groups into on unit.

For instance, Igbos have lower level of power distance and are more individualistic, Hausas are more communistic and higher in power distance, while the Yorubas maintain a combination of both. As such, the Hofstede’s dimension which groups Nigeria as a communistic and high power distance country is limited because it applies to only one ethnic group. Thus, it can be said that applying one cultural dimension to ethnically and cultural diverse countries such as Nigeria is not feasible as it negates some cultures and yield limited outcomes from such applications in the real-life setting.

References

Mitchell A. Orenstein (2012), “Nigeria: Comparative National Systems.” Available at:

 http://www.mitchellorenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Nigeria.pdf [Accessed on: 1^st of June, 2014].