How Humour and Satire Allow Nigerians to Process Difficult Realities
A few weeks ago, Nigerians on X (formerly Twitter) once again engaged in discussions over the contradiction of the budget reports for Q1 and Q2 2025 still being unreleased by the Federal Government and the new tax reform (which will be implemented as of January 2026) which is expected to tie tax collection to personal data ie National Identification Numbers and expand the tax bracket to include informal workers.
The conversation went viral. And, in classic Nigerian fashion, many turned the conversation into jokes Citizens highlighted the government’s want for more transparency and a larger tax net being inconsistent with its pending transparency reports on its own expenditure.
This is not unusual. Each time Nigeria is confronted with a socio-political crisis, it gets dissolved into banter. The humour is often brilliant, but poses the question: Is this purely a coping mechanism or has laughter become a substitute for accountability?
Nigeria’s tendency to pull humor into hardship can be traced back to pre-colonial oral traditions, where song performances often contained playful criticisms of rulers or communal life.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, stand-up comedy began to gain traction among Nigerians,comedians used jokes to highlight cultural context and government inefficiencies.
By the time television was introduced and later the internet arrived, humour had become one of Nigeria’s most consistent ways of processing chaos.
Digitization and globalization have now widened the net with the impact of humor getting bigger and comedians having access to a larger audience.
Humour thrives on our shared experiences of what it means to be Nigerian. It is deeply woven into our culture as a society with a communal social system.
We rely on each other for survival, comfort, and identity. This sense of collective belonging also shapes humour. Joking about a crisis is a way of reaffirming, “We are all in this together.”
This is why during national tragedies, humour tends to circulate with sorrow. It is an attempt to collectively process grief, anger and confusion. Yet, this sometimes makes light of situations that should demand reflection.
The pattern is evident in Nigeria’s recent history. When Chibok girls were kidnapped in 2014, the famous video of First Lady Patience Jonathan crying “na only you waka come” became a meme, overshadowing the actual tragedy for a time.
Similarly, during the Ebola outbreak, social media was flooded with jokes and cartoons about hand washing and fear of handshakes. Scholars later observed that while these jokes helped reduce panic, they also spread misinformation and minimized the seriousness of the outbreak. In each case, humour was both a source of relief and distraction.
Furthermore, digital humor has taken a different form. The viral #CorruptTok trend on TikTok shows how young Nigerians remix corruption scandals into playful skits and memes.
Old scandals, like the absurd claim that a snake swallowed millions of naira, have become content.
In many of these videos, young people exaggerate their way through Nigeria’s most ridiculous stories. The tone is bubbly and almost unserious, yet the underlying message that they are hyper-aware of our broken system is quite unsettling.
For Gen Z and Millennials, satire has become a way to stay politically engaged without spiraling When corruption becomes entertainment, it risks losing its expected sting. One joke can call out unexpected manners that do not align with social norms, but too many jokes can catapult us into a reality where corruption is “normal”.
Psychologists say laughter reduces stress hormones and creates psychological distance from painful realities. But, this can also breed desensitization . If every crisis is reduced to a meme, individuals may begin to feel powerless, leading to apathy.
On society as a whole, humour strengthens bonds. Shared jokes reaffirm collective identity and preserve stories of how people lived through crises. Yet society also risks becoming trapped in cycles of passive awareness. The energy that might fuel activism becomes used for reposts and likes.
We must reevaluate the way we view these issues and address them with due respect and concern. But, for corruption to no longer be a norm in society, the entire system that is infiltrated with corruption and lack of proper values must be replaced with a sociopolitical system that respects our rights as citizens.
This also calls for us Nigerians to hold ourselves accountable. The more we make light of the serious issues that negatively impact us everyday, the more we are likely to make decisions based on the values that have created these systems in the first place.
In doing so, we make them more “normal” among ourselves and our country continues to be a running joke. Whenever we have the chance to do good, and to uphold our social responsibilities as citizens, we must take it.