Ja Pa and Jokes in Nigerian Skits

The Yoruba coinage ja pa has recently emerged as an impactful urban catchphrase in Nigeria for voicing desired and actual emigration. When used by young people, it is especially humorous, electrifying and impressionistic, articulating their perception of Nigeria as a dystopia, while also hyping the global North as an Eldorado. In this article, I analyse how Nigerian skit makers produce humour in response to the ja pa phenomenon by tweaking emigration outcomes in ways that contrast with the expectations of young people. I curate four randomly selected skits and discuss them as contemporary cultural artefacts in which young Nigerians speak to a local addressivity constituted by Nigerian Pidgin (NP), the national language of "infotainment". Focusing on the selection, I argue that the humour thrives on comparisons of locations that finally produce a result in which the Nigerian homeland of emigrants and the host nations to which they ja pa (escape) are inalienably mired in dystopian consciousness

Art · Consciousness · Dystopia · Literature · Leadership, Courage, and Heroism Studies · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology

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