Editorial: Dis laf fit kill person - An overview of Nigerian humour

Abstract

In Nigeria, in relation to the aforesaid functions, everyday citizens and professional humourists use humour to express their expectations from and disappointments in the socio-political leadership of the country. Common Nigerian jokes indicate the country’s travails with ethnicity and failed political leadership. They also enunciate populist perspectives on nationhood, identity and the challenges of everyday living. In spite of the centrality of humour to daily life in Nigeria, scholarly interests in its sociocultural, political, rhetorical, interactional and interpersonal dimensions have been very minimal. According to Obadare (2016), it is as if once something is categorised as humour, it is expunged from any serious interrogations. There are diverse and numerous dimensions of humour in Nigeria, given the country’s extensive and still expanding popular culture landscape. A handful of these dimensions are examined in the papers that make up this special issue of EJHR.

Keywords

• nigeria, humor, genres