By Philip Obazee

Cultural Density Is Not the Question

Nigeria does not suffer from cultural emptiness. On the contrary, Nigeria is one of the most culturally dense societies in the world. Across its regions, languages, religions, ethnic communities, towns, villages, and urban neighborhoods, one finds a vast inheritance of meaning: respect for elders, communal obligation, reverence for family, religious seriousness, hospitality, language, music, dress, food, ceremony, apprenticeship, kinship, storytelling, and an instinctive awareness that the individual is never simply an isolated atom but part of a larger moral community.

These are not small things. They are among the deepest resources a people can possess. A society without culture is a society without memory. A people without shared meanings cannot easily build trust, transmit discipline, preserve dignity, or sustain moral continuity across generations.

So, the problem is not that Nigeria lacks culture. Nigeria has culture in abundance.

The Real Question: Has Inheritance Been Weaponized?

Yet the question before us is not whether Nigerian culture is rich. It is. The harder question is whether some of the very cultural forms that once helped communities survive are now being selectively invoked, distorted, or weaponized in ways that obstruct socioeconomic development and human progress.

This is the uncomfortable question: are we sometimes using culture not as a source of wisdom, identity, and renewal, but as a mechanism for preserving dysfunction?

Are we using culture to support responsibility, discipline, education, enterprise, and institutional order? Or are we using it to defend hierarchy, silence dissent, excuse incompetence, protect corruption, suppress women, burden young people, consume productivity, and punish reform?

The distinction matters. A culture can be a developmental asset. But the same culture, when captured by fear, entitlement, hierarchy, or opportunism, can become a developmental constraint.

Two Lazy Extremes: Cultural Contempt and Cultural Sacralization

That question must be handled carefully. It is easy to fall into two lazy extremes.

One extreme says that local culture is the problem: that Nigeria cannot develop because its traditions are backward, its communities too communal, its people too religious, its family systems too demanding, and its moral codes too resistant to modern life. This view is shallow. It mistakes abuse for essence. It confuses the misuse of culture with culture itself. It also carries the smell of cultural contempt.

The opposite extreme is equally weak. It says that local culture must never be questioned because it is “ours.” It treats inherited practices as immune from criticism simply because they are old, familiar, or emotionally powerful. It assumes that anything called tradition is automatically wise. That view is dangerous. No serious society can flourish if it lacks the courage to examine its own habits.

A people who despise their culture lose continuity. But people who sacralize their culture lose the capacity for correction.

The Mature Position: Living Culture vs. Weaponized Culture

A mature position lies between these extremes. Local culture is not inherently anti-developmental. Local culture can generate trust, cooperation, moral discipline, intergenerational memory, informal welfare, social identity, and practical knowledge. It can restrain selfishness. It can give people roots. It can remind individuals that they belong to something larger than themselves.

But local culture can also be converted into a weapon.

It can be used to silence young people, suppress women, excuse incompetence, protect corrupt elders, reward conformity, punish innovation, normalize dependency, sanctify mediocrity, and prevent communities from adapting to changing economic realities.

The problem, therefore, is not culture as such. The problem is weaponized culture.

Defining Weaponization

By “weaponized culture,” I mean the strategic use of inherited norms, symbols, identities, and obligations as instruments of control.

Culture is weaponized when it stops functioning as a living source of meaning and becomes a coercive mechanism for disciplining people into obedience. It is weaponized when “this is our culture” becomes a way of ending conversation rather than beginning reflection. It is weaponized when custom becomes a shield for power, when respect becomes a tool of silence, when communal obligation becomes organized extraction, when religion becomes fatalism, and when ethnic loyalty becomes an excuse for incompetence.

The central issue is not whether Nigerians should preserve local culture. Of course we should. The issue is whether we can distinguish between culture that enlarges life and culture that diminishes it; between culture that strengthens human capability and culture that weakens it; between culture that helps society coordinate toward development and culture that coordinates people against development.

Culture as Infrastructure: The Invisible Operating System

This distinction is urgent because socioeconomic development is not produced by money alone. Development requires roads, electricity, schools, hospitals, investment, technology, law, and administrative capacity. But underneath all these lies something less visible: a society’s coordination system.

People must know what is rewarded, what is punished, what is admired, what is tolerated, what is shameful, and what is honorable. A society develops when its norms support learning, productivity, discipline, accountability, trust, innovation, and institutional fairness. A society stagnates when its norms punish those very things.

In this sense, culture is not adornment. Culture is infrastructure. It is the invisible operating system of social life.

The tragedy is that some parts of Nigerian local culture, or what we call culture, have been turned into anti-developmental software.

Respect for Elders, or Immunity from Accountability?

Consider the culture of respect for elders. Properly understood, respect for elders is a noble norm. It recognizes that age can carry memory, sacrifice, experience, and moral authority. A society that treats the elderly with contempt destroys its own continuity.

But when respect for elders becomes immunity from accountability, it becomes dangerous. When an elder cannot be questioned even when he is wrong, when a traditional ruler cannot be challenged even when he enables injustice, when a political elder cannot be criticized even after decades of failure, then respect has been weaponized.

Respect should not mean surrender of judgment. Age may deserve courtesy, but it does not automatically confer wisdom. Seniority may deserve recognition, but it does not abolish truth.

A society that cannot correct its elders cannot correct its errors. And a society that cannot correct its errors cannot develop.

Family as Social Capital, Family as Extraction System

The same applies to family obligation. Nigerian family life is one of the great strengths of the society. In a country where formal welfare systems are weak, the family often functions as school, bank, hospital, insurance company, employment agency, emotional refuge, and retirement plan. Many Nigerians survive because family members help one another. That is not a weakness. It is a form of social capital.

But family obligation can also be weaponized.

It is weaponized when the successful individual is treated not as a person with responsibilities and limits, but as a permanent extraction point. It is weaponized when every salary becomes communal property, every achievement becomes an entitlement claim, every private ambition becomes morally suspect unless it feeds an extended network. It is weaponized when relatives who refuse discipline, education, or productive work claim cultural rights over the income of those who sacrificed to build something.

This is not solidarity. It is dependency enforced by guilt.

A developmental family system should support effort, education, enterprise, savings, discipline, and intergenerational mobility. An anti-developmental family system punishes the productiveness and subsidizes irresponsibility.

The Cultural Tax on Productivity

This problem becomes even more serious when success itself is misunderstood. In many Nigerian communities, visible success attracts social pressure faster than institutional support. Build a house, and the requests multiply. Buy a car, and people assume you have crossed into inexhaustible abundance. Win a contract, and relatives emerge with claims. Get a political appointment, and the village expects distribution. Start a business, and family members may expect jobs regardless of competence.

The result is a social order in which achievement is not always protected, disciplined, and reinvested. It is often consumed. This weakens capital formation. It discourages risk-taking. It creates incentives for secrecy, evasion, and sometimes corruption.

If a person knows that every legitimate gain will be socially extracted, he may hide his success, avoid returning home, refuse investment, or seek faster and less transparent ways of accumulating money.

Thus, what appears to be communal support can become a tax on productivity. Unlike a formal tax, however, this cultural tax is not used to build roads, schools, hospitals, or public goods. It often disappears into consumption, ceremonies, status displays, and recurrent dependency.

There is a difference between helping one’s people and being economically cannibalized by them. The first is moral. The second is destructive.

When Recognition Launders Wealth

This brings us to another cultural distortion: the social celebration of wealth without sufficient concern for its source. Too often, Nigerian society honors arrival more than process. The person who “has made it” is celebrated before anyone asks how he made it. He receives titles, chieftaincy honors, front-row seats, religious recognition, political influence, and marital desirability. The moral question is often postponed, softened, or buried.

This too is weaponized culture.

Traditional recognition systems that once honored service, bravery, wisdom, generosity, and communal contribution are sometimes redirected toward raw wealth. Once that happens, culture stops disciplining greed and starts laundering it. The community becomes a reputational washing machine.

A person may loot public resources, exploit workers, manipulate contracts, or engage in fraud, and still be celebrated because he “remembered his people” during a festival or donated to a church roof, mosque project, school event, or village road.

A society that honors wealth without interrogating its origin teaches its children a brutal lesson: character is optional if success is visible enough. That lesson is fatal to development. No economy can flourish sustainably when prestige is detached from productive contribution.

Ethnic Identity and the Capture of Public Judgment

Ethnic loyalty presents another example. Ethnic identity is not a disease. It gives people language, belonging, history, kinship, cuisine, music, and moral orientation. Nigerians should not be ashamed of being Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Edo, Tiv, Ijaw, Ibibio, Efik, Nupe, Kanuri, Urhobo, Itsekiri, Gwari, Idoma, Igala, or any other identity.

The problem is not ethnic identity. The problem is ethnic capture of judgment.

Ethnic culture is weaponized when it demands loyalty to incompetence simply because incompetence speaks one’s language. It is weaponized when corruption becomes tolerable if committed by “our son.” It is weaponized when public criticism is treated as betrayal of the group. It is weaponized when elections become ethnic census exercises rather than evaluations of competence, character, policy, and institutional seriousness.

Development requires meritocratic coordination. People must be placed where they can perform. Institutions must be led by those with competence. Public resources must be treated as common goods, not ethnic spoils.

But when ethnic loyalty overrides public reason, society loses the ability to select for capacity. It rewards belonging over performance. It confuses group pride with national progress.

Faith as Discipline, Faith as Escape from Responsibility

Religion also deserves careful discussion. Nigeria is a deeply religious country, and religion has given millions of people meaning, discipline, hope, charity, endurance, and moral vocabulary. At its best, religion can restrain selfishness, encourage service, deepen humility, and remind human beings that power is not ultimate.

But religion can be weaponized against development when it becomes a substitute for responsibility.

It is weaponized when prayer is used to avoid planning, when prophecy replaces competence, when miracles replace maintenance, when “God will do it” becomes an excuse for refusing to do what human beings are obligated to do. It is weaponized when religious leaders discourage questioning, exploit desperation, sanctify political power, or teach people to endure preventable suffering as though suffering itself were a virtue.

No serious reading of faith should make people irresponsible. If anything, genuine faith should deepen responsibility. A person who believes life is sacred should care about hospitals. A person who believes truth matters should care about education. A person who believes justice matters should care about courts. A person who believes stewardship matters should care about public finance, roads, electricity, water, sanitation, and institutional integrity.

Religion becomes anti-developmental not when people believe in God, but when belief is detached from discipline, reason, work, accountability, and public ethics.

Gender and the Suppression of Half the Talent Pool

Another area where culture can obstruct flourishing is gender. Many Nigerian communities publicly praise women while privately limiting them. We call women mothers, builders, nurturers, and pillars of society, but too often we deny girls equal investment, restrict women’s autonomy, police their ambition, tolerate domestic domination, or treat marriage as the central measure of female worth.

No society can develop fully while suppressing half its talent pool.

This is not a Western point. It is a developmental point. A girl denied education is not merely an individual loss; she is a loss to the economy, the family, the polity, and the future. A woman prevented from owning property, scaling a business, inheriting fairly, speaking in public, or exercising agency is not simply being “kept in culture.” She is being excluded from capability.

Culture is weaponized when it tells women to endure injustice for the sake of family honor. It is weaponized when it tells girls to shrink so boys can feel large. It is weaponized when it protects male irresponsibility but disciplines female aspiration. It is weaponized when marriage becomes a cage rather than a covenant of dignity.

A developmental culture does not fear capable women. It educates them, protects them, respects them, and allows their gifts to enlarge society.

Youth: Responsibility Without Authority

The same anti-developmental pattern appears in our treatment of young people. Nigeria is a young society, but age hierarchy often gives young people responsibility without authority, blame without power, and expectations without institutional support. The youth are told they are leaders of tomorrow, but tomorrow is indefinitely postponed. They are told to be patient while those who have held power for decades continue to rotate influence among themselves.

This is cultural as much as political. In many spaces, a young person who asks a serious question is accused of arrogance. A young professional who challenges outdated methods is told to “calm down.” A young woman who speaks with clarity is called rude. A young man who refuses patronage politics is called naïve.

Innovation is welcomed in slogans but resisted in practice.

No society can become modern if its young people are allowed to use smartphones but not allowed to use their minds.

Development requires generational transfer of authority. Not reckless displacement of elders, but real succession. Elders should advise, mentor, and transmit memory. They should not monopolize possibility. Youth should learn, prepare, and respect experience. But they should not be trained into permanent obedience.

A country that fears its young people fears its own future.

Shame and the Failure of Error Correction

Then there is the culture of shame. Shame can serve a moral function when it discourages harmful behavior. But shame becomes destructive when it suppresses truth.

In many Nigerian communities, people hide illness, failure, abuse, infertility, mental distress, financial struggle, marital problems, academic difficulty, and family dysfunction because public image matters more than honest repair. We often prefer appearances to diagnosis.

This is anti-developmental because no problem can be solved if it cannot first be named. A student who is struggling needs help, not humiliation. A family facing financial distress needs planning, not performance. A woman facing abuse needs protection, not lectures about family reputation. A man facing depression needs care, not mockery. A business that is failing needs restructuring, not fake displays of prosperity.

Culture is weaponized when it forces people to lie in order to belong.

Shame based societies often underreport problems until they become crises. They hide incompetence until systems breakdown. They conceal corruption until damage is irreversible. They avoid performance evaluation because evaluation may embarrass someone. They reject feedback because feedback is interpreted as insult.

Such societies cannot learn efficiently.

Attacking the Messenger, Protecting the Malfunction

This is one of Nigeria’s deepest problems: we often personalize criticism instead of institutionalizing correction. The person who points out failure becomes the enemy, while the failure itself remains untouched.

We ask, “Why are you embarrassing us?” when we should ask, “Is what you said true?”

A society that attacks the messenger protects the malfunction.

Learning requires error correction. Error correction requires truth. Truth requires a culture that can tolerate discomfort. If every correction is treated as disrespect, then mediocrity becomes protected. If every warning is treated as betrayal, then collapse becomes predictable. If every critic is treated as an enemy, then institutions lose the capacity to repair themselves.

Development is not possible without correction. And correction is not possible where truth-telling is culturally punished.

When Networks Are Stronger Than Institutions

The weaponization of culture also appears in the way we handle public institutions. Many Nigerians condemn corruption in general but defend it in particular when their own relative, ethnic ally, benefactor, religious associate, or political patron is involved.

We want good governance, but we also want “our person” to help us bypass the rules. We complain about disorder, but we ask for exceptions. We denounce nepotism, but we expect our uncle to “put in a word.” We criticize patronage, but we celebrate access.

This contradiction is not accidental. It reflects a cultural conflict between institutional citizenship and personal networks.

In weak states, people rely on networks because institutions are unreliable. That is understandable. But when networks become stronger than institutions, development suffers. The rule of law cannot mature where personal connection is more powerful than public procedure.

A developmental culture must slowly shift honor away from “I know somebody” toward “the system works.” That shift is difficult, but necessary. Modern development requires impersonal reliability. Electricity should not depend on who you know. Justice should not depend on who calls the judge. Admission should not depend on a family contact. Contracts should not depend on ethnic closeness. Public service should not depend on patronage.

The cultural defense of personalism is one of the quiet enemies of Nigerian development.

Ceremony, Display, and the Balance Sheet

Ceremony is another area that requires reflection. Nigerian ceremonies are beautiful: weddings, funerals, naming ceremonies, festivals, title-taking, religious celebrations, community gatherings. These events sustain identity and solidarity.

But ceremony becomes anti-developmental when it imposes unsustainable financial burdens on households. When families borrow heavily to perform status, when burial ceremonies consume resources that could educate children, when weddings become competitive displays of class anxiety, when social recognition depends on extravagance, culture has been captured by consumption.

A society serious about development must ask whether its ceremonies build community or destroy balance sheets. Celebration is not wrong. Waste is wrong. Honor is not wrong. Financial self-harm in the name of honor is wrong.

The pressure to perform success is especially damaging in a fragile economy. It pushes people into debt, corruption, fraud, and emotional exhaustion. It teaches citizens to look prosperous rather than become productive. It privileges spectacle over substance.

Development requires savings, investment, skill formation, infrastructure, and productive enterprise. A culture that over-rewards display diverts resources from these foundations.

Social Sanctions and the Bad-Equilibrium Trap

At the center of all these examples lies a common mechanism: social sanctions.

People often know what is better, but they fear the cost of doing it. A woman may know she deserves autonomy, but fear family rejection. A young man may know a business idea is better than waiting for patronage, but fear being mocked if he fails. A civil servant may know corruption is wrong, but fear isolation if he refuses to participate. A politician may know competence matters, but fear losing ethnic support if he chooses merit over loyalty. A family may know an extravagant burial is financially foolish, but fear community gossip if it is modest.

In simple terms, development is blocked when the social cost of doing the right thing becomes higher than the private reward for doing it.

When that happens, people conform against their own better judgment. They perform culture publicly while doubting it privately. This is how bad equilibria survive.

A society can be trapped in a pattern that many individuals dislike but continue to reproduce because no one wants to bear the cost of being first to deviate.

Reform as a Coordination Problem

The key word is equilibrium.

Everyone complains about expensive ceremonies, but everyone keeps attending and judging them. Everyone complains about corruption, but many still seek favors. Everyone complains that young people lack opportunity, but elders refuse to yield power. Everyone says education matters, but some still invest more in status consumption than in children’s learning. Everyone says Nigeria must change, but many punish the people who behave differently.

This is why cultural reform is so hard. The problem is not only belief. It is coordination. People need confidence that others will also change. Otherwise, the reformer becomes the fool.

A young person who chooses simplicity in a ceremony may be mocked. A public officer who refuses patronage may be isolated. A woman who insists on dignity may be accused of arrogance. A family that refuses wasteful burial spending may be called ungrateful. A voter who rejects ethnic loyalty may be treated as a traitor.

The task, therefore, is not simply to persuade individuals. It is to change what communities reward and punish.

What Is to Be Done

So, what should be done?

The answer is not cultural abandonment. Nigeria does not need to become less Nigerian in order to develop. The answer is cultural renewal: the deliberate reconstruction of norms so that culture supports capability, productivity, dignity, accountability, and institutional seriousness.

The following principles matter.

1. Love Without Blind Loyalty: Criticism as Renewal

First, we must stop treating culture as beyond criticism. Love of culture does not require blind loyalty. In fact, serious love requires correction. Parents correct children they love. Teachers correct students they believe in. Citizens must correct cultures they wish to preserve.

A culture that cannot be criticized cannot be renewed. And a culture that cannot be renewed will eventually become a museum or a prison.

2. Ancestral Wisdom vs. Inherited Habit

Second, we must distinguish between ancestral wisdom and inherited habit.

Not everything inherited is wise. Some practices emerged under conditions of insecurity, low literacy, subsistence agriculture, patriarchal control, weak state capacity, or limited technological possibility. They may have had a function in one historical setting but become harmful in another.

To preserve everything unchanged is not fidelity. It is intellectual laziness.

The point is not to insult the past. The point is to recognize that the past itself was adaptive. Our ancestors adjusted to their circumstances. We dishonor them when we refuse to adjust to ours.

3. A Developmental Test for Cultural Practice

Third, we need a developmental test for culture.

Before defending a practice as “our culture,” we should ask: Does it expand human capability? Does it strengthen education? Does it reward productive work? Does it protect dignity? Does it improve health? Does it support truth-telling? Does it encourage accountability? Does it allow women and men to flourish? Does it help children become competent adults? Does it build institutions? Does it reduce fear? Does it make cooperation more productive?

If the answer is no, then we should have the courage to reform it.

4. Rewiring Aspiration: Rebuilding Honor Systems

Fourth, we must create new honor systems.

Societies move toward what they honor. If we honor looted wealth, we will get more looting. If we honor empty titles, we will get more title-chasing. If we honor loud religiosity without ethics, we will get hypocrisy. If we honor ethnic loyalty over competence, we will get institutional decay.

But if we honor teachers, builders, honest public servants, disciplined entrepreneurs, skilled workers, scientists, nurses, engineers, farmers, artists, and accountable leaders, we begin to rewire aspiration.

Development is not only about punishing wrongdoing. It is also about honoring the right things.

5. Families as Engines of Capability, Not Systems of Extraction

Fifth, families must become engines of capability rather than systems of extraction.

The family should help its members become stronger, not permanently dependent. Support should be tied, where possible, to discipline, education, work, and responsibility. Helping a relative start a productive trade, complete schooling, acquire a skill, or stabilize through crisis is different from endlessly funding irresponsibility.

Compassion must be joined to structure.

A family that consumes the productive capacity of its most disciplined members is not building solidarity. It is weakening its own future.

6. The Nobility of Stewardship: Elderhood Reconsidered

Sixth, elders must recover the nobility of stewardship.

True elderhood is not domination. It is guidance. The elder’s role is not to block the road but to prepare others to walk it well. A great elder does not fear succession. He blesses it. He does not silence questions. He refines them. He does not demand obedience to error. He models correction.

The best elders are not those who insist on being obeyed forever. They are those who prepare the next generation to exceed them.

7. Modernization Without Self-Contempt

Seventh, young Nigerians must reject the false idea that modernity means contempt for roots.

Cultural reform does not require cultural self-hatred. One can speak one’s language, honor one’s parents, love one’s village, practice one’s faith, respect tradition, and still demand accountability, gender dignity, scientific seriousness, institutional competence, and economic modernization.

The choice is not between being Nigerian and being developed. The task is to become developed as Nigerians.

Living Culture, Not Frozen Culture

That requires a living culture, not a frozen one.

A living culture learns. It absorbs. It tests. It discards what harms. It preserves what gives depth. It adapts without disappearing. It knows that continuity is not the same as repetition.

The river remains itself not because the same water never moves, but because movement is part of its nature.

A frozen culture treats change as betrayal. A living culture treats change as responsibility. A frozen culture demands conformity. A living culture permits correction. A frozen culture protects power. A living culture protects possibility.

Nigeria needs living cultures: rooted enough to preserve memory, flexible enough to support development.

The Latent Developmental Assets

Nigeria’s local cultures can be powerful developmental assets.

Our communal instincts can support cooperative enterprise. Our respect for learning can strengthen education. Our religious seriousness can deepen public ethics. Our family networks can become investment networks. Our ceremonies can build social trust without financial excess. Our ethnic identities can enrich federalism rather than destroy citizenship. Our elders can mentor rather than monopolize. Our youth can innovate without severing memory. Our women can lead without being told leadership is culturally improper.

But none of this will happen automatically.

It requires moral courage. It requires saying no when culture is used as blackmail. It requires asking hard questions at family meetings, village gatherings, churches, mosques, schools, political forums, and professional spaces. It requires refusing to confuse silence with respect, dependency with solidarity, display with dignity, ethnicity with competence, and fatalism with faith.

Culture can support development. But only when it is disciplined by truth, dignity, accountability, and human flourishing.

The Interrogations

The Nigerian question is not whether we have culture. We do. The question is whether our culture is organized for flourishing.

Are we using culture to raise children who can think, build, cooperate, and lead? Or are we using it to produce fear, conformity, entitlement, and silence?

Are we using culture to protect the vulnerable? Or to protect the powerful?

Are we using culture to transmit wisdom? Or to preserve error?

Are we using culture to build institutions? Or to bypass them?

Are we using culture to honor productive contribution? Or to decorate questionable wealth?

Are we using culture to deepen responsibility? Or to excuse failure?

These questions matter because development is ultimately human. Roads are built by people. Laws are enforced by people. Schools are taught by people. Hospitals are run by people. Businesses are created by people. Technologies are adopted by people. Institutions are maintained by people.

If the cultural environment trains people to fear truth, avoid accountability, consume achievement, distrust merit, and punish reform, then development will remain fragile no matter how many plans are written.

Culture Is Not Fate

Nigeria does not need to abandon local culture. Nigeria needs to rescue local culture from weaponization.

We need cultures that can bless ambition without turning it into arrogance; honor elders without making them untouchable; support family without destroying individual agency; celebrate faith without abolishing responsibility; preserve ethnicity without sacrificing citizenship; respect women without limiting them; guide youth without suffocating them; celebrate success without ignoring its source; and sustain ceremony without glorifying waste.

The future will not belong to societies that simply inherit culture. It will belong to societies that discipline, refine, and renew culture in the direction of human flourishing.

So yes, Nigerians must ask ourselves: are we weaponizing our local culture against our socioeconomic development?

The honest answer is that sometimes we are.

But the better answer is that we do not have to continue. Culture is not fate. Culture is a human inheritance, and because it is human, it can be examined, corrected, and renewed.

The task is not to become less Nigerian. The task is to become more intelligently, more ethically, and more developmentally Nigerian.

A culture worthy of the future must not simply tell people where they come from. It must help them become what they are capable of becoming.

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Philip Obazee retired as a managing director and head of derivatives from Macquarie Asset Management – a global asset management company with an office in Philadelphia, PA, USA, and currently, he is the founder and chief executive officer of Polymetrics Americas Research.