ORAL TRADITION AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY IN OBANLIKU LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, CROSS RIVER STATE, NIGERIA

This study examines the role of oral tradition in promoting social sustainability in Obanliku Local Government Area, Cross River State, Nigeria. Framed against the backdrop of accelerating global cultural universalisation and grounded in the premise that a society detached from its historical roots resembles a rootless epiphyte which grows on another host with its roots aloft (hanging). The study underscores the indispensability of oral tradition as the foundation of collective identity, cultural continuity and sustainable development. The study employed a descriptive field-inquiry method, drawing a sample of 450 respondents (225 adults, 225 youths) through area/cluster, stratified, and random sampling techniques. Data were collected via structured questionnaires, oral interviews, and observation of heritage sites, and analysed using chi-square statistics to test two hypotheses concerning adults' and youths' perceptions of oral tradition in the study area. Findings revealed statistically significant results for both groups (adults: χ² = 284.08; youths: χ² = 178.67; df = 24; p < 0.05), leading to rejection of both null hypotheses. Adults expressed markedly stronger appreciation of oral tradition's contribution to cultural transmission, identity, moral formation, cohesion, and peace than youths, whose perceptions reflected the competing influence of modernisation and globalisation alongside acknowledged communal disharmony arising from the distortion of tradition. The study recommends government-supported documentation and digital archiving of oral traditions, curricular integration of indigenous knowledge, sustained funding for cultural festivals, promotion of indigenous languages, and intergenerational mentorship programmes to safeguard oral tradition as a strategic historical resource for sustainable social development.