Suffering and smiling: Nigerians’ humorous response to the coronavirus pandemic

Abstract

Nigerians have intriguing penchant for humour even in moments of life tribulations, grief and uncertainties. They tend to defy being overwhelmed by sorrow, fear or even their helplessness in the face of adversity. Consequently, despite the global hysteria that has trailed the outbreak of the dreaded coronavirus, Nigerians stoically manage their grief through humour. The growing predilection for humour production and consumption in the country, which is partly occasioned by the advent of social media and an unprecedented growth of the Night of a Thousand Laughs (a stand-up comedy industry), deserves scholarly attention on account of its social and mental health impacts. This work blends Freudian psychoanalysis with Merton’s functional analysis to build a framework of analysis that captures the psychogenesis and consequences of Nigerians’ humorous response to the coronavirus pandemic. Semiotic method was used to analyse some selected humorous memes, cartoons, pictures and videos on or about COVID-19 obtained from WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube between March and August, 2020. In so doing, these humorous stuffs were subjected to both broad and context specific analyses. It was found that although the humours were expressed in different styles, they are mostly aggressive (intended to ridicule their leaders using satire, sarcasm), and self-enhancing (used as mechanisms to cope with boredom and anxiety occasioned by the pandemic) and, in a few cases, self-defeating (involved self-mockery: use of remarks that are self-demeaning or self-disparaging). The article concludes that the COVID-19-induced humours are a route to their peddlers’ unconscious realm and a defence mechanism to anxiety, stress and boredom. While the spread of these jokes has manifest function of self-enhancing, their latent consequence is that they trivialize the pandemic and, by extension, make people reluctant to take precautionary measures and comply with the established guidelines and protocols.