Email this article Stand-Up Comedy as Social and Political Critique: Examining the Critical Power of Humour in Contemporary Nigerian and African Performance
Abstract
In Africa, especially Nigeria, stand-up comedy has emerged as a popular performance genre and, in fact, a full-fledged cultural and commercial industry. Nigerian stand-up comedy addresses governance, corruption, poverty, inequality, ethnicity, religion, gender, and other social paradoxes. This article speaks about stand-up comedy in Nigeria as a vehicle for social and political critique, and how comedy can help redefine entertainment into a public commentary. The study employs qualitative performance analysis, textual analysis, and contextual interpretation to analyse the selected performances and comic personas of Gbenga Adeboye, I Go Dye, Basketmouth, and Gordons, as well as digitally mediated comedy. It introduces the idea of the Comic Critic as well as a Comic Critique Cycle: how social realities are translated into comic observations, a performance, punchlines, and a response from the audience and critical reflection. The results show that Nigeria's stand-up comedy allows for social criticism through the lens of ordinary experiences shared as objects of laughter and reflection. But its critical tendencies are ambivalent too: humour is able to confront power and yet maintain stereotypes; it can disrupt and yet be comfortable with commercial needs. According to the article, the stand-up arena in Nigeria is a dynamic cultural field where humour, power, identity, commerce, and criticism converge. It suggests the use of stand-up comedy within the curriculum of Theatre and Performance Studies courses, the use of ethnographic studies of live audiences, as well as developing ethical guidelines to encourage critical engagement and minimise harmful stereotypes.
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Abidin, C. (2020). Internet celebrity: Understanding fame online. Emerald Publishing.
Adebanwi, W. (2020). Nation, constitutionalism and governmentality in Nigeria. Cambridge University Press.
Adejunmobi, M. (2020). Vernacular palaver: Imaginations of the local and non-native languages in West Africa. Multilingual Matters.
Adesokan, A. (2020). Everything is sampled: Popular culture and the politics of recognition in Nigeria. Indiana University Press.
Adeyemi, O. (2024). Performative citizenship and digital comedy in Nigeria. Journal of African Media Studies, 16(2), 145–162. https://doi.org/10.1386/jams_00095_1
Afolayan, A. (2022). Comedy on the cusp of plurality: Gbenga Adeboye and the context of social critique in Nigeria. Nokoko, 10, 41–62.
Agbaje, A. (2019). Language and indirect critique in Nigerian popular performance. African Studies Review, 62(3), 78–96. https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2018.112
Akande, A., Adedeji, K., & Robbin, A. (2020). Language, vulgarity and social critique: The case of Nigerian Pidgin in stand-up comedy. Lagos Notes and Records, 25(1), 1–18.
Amaefula, R. C. (2026). Digital comedy skits, male-to-female cross-dressing and gender non-conformance in Nigeria. South African Theatre Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2025.2583943
Aguoru, D. (2022). From Alarinjo to Oniduro: Stand-up comedy as a neo-cultural expression. Nokoko, 10, 19–39.
Avoaja, L. (2025). Ideological constructs through nominal choice in Nigerian stand-up comedy. The European Journal of Humour Research, 13(3), 235–247. https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR.2024.13.2.1026
Barber, K. (2018). The anthropology of texts, persons and publics: Oral and written culture in Africa and beyond. Cambridge University Press.
Billig, M. (2021). Laughter and ridicule: Towards a social critique of humour. Sage.
Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. L. (2020). Theory from the South: Or, how Euro-America is evolving toward Africa. Routledge.
Conquergood, D. (2019). Cultural struggles: Performance, ethnography, praxis. University of Michigan Press.
Couldry, N. (2020). Media: Why it matters. Polity.
Deuber, D. (2019). Nigerian Pidgin in Lagos: Language contact, variation and change in an African urban setting. Battlebridge Publications.
Eko, L. (2019). The news media in Nigeria: A political economy of crisis and change. Routledge.
Ferguson, J. (2021). Give a man a fish: Reflections on the new politics of distribution. Duke University Press.
Filani, I. (2020). A discourse analysis of national identity in Nigerian stand-up humour. Discourse, Context & Media, 33, 100356. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445620906035
Githiora, C. (2021). Comedians as public intellectuals in Kenya. African Studies Review, 64(2), 334–356. https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2020.78
Hammett, D., Martin, L. S., & Nwankwọ, I. (2023). Humour and politics in Africa: Beyond resistance. Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.46692/9781529219739
Hesmondhalgh, D. (2019). The cultural industries (4th ed.). Sage.
Kiguru, G. (2022). Comedy and censorship in Kenya: Strategies of indirection. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 34(3), 287–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2021.1989598
Madison, D. S. (2020). Critical ethnography: Method, ethics, and performance (3rd ed.). Sage.
Mark, T. G. (2026). Digital vernacular comedy in Nigeria: Form, circulation, and meaning. African Identities. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2026.2677560
Mbembe, A. (2021). On the postcolony. University of California Press.
Mensah, E. O., Inyabri, I. T., & Aboh, R. (2023). Sexual jokes in Nigerian stand-up comedy: A multifaceted analytic approach. The European Journal of Humour Research, 11(3), 54–71. https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR.2023.11.3.791
Mokoena, S. (2023). Commercial pressures and political comedy in South Africa. Critical Arts, 37(4), 56–73. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2023.2198765
Morreall, J. (2019). Comic relief: A comprehensive philosophy of humor. Wiley-Blackwell.
Moyo, L. (2021). Digital comedy and political critique in Zimbabwe. Journal of African Media Studies, 13(1), 89–106. https://doi.org/10.1386/jams_00035_1
Mukerji, C. (2020). Modernity reimagined: An analytic guide. Routledge.
Ndlovu, M. (2024). Rethinking political efficacy in African humour studies. African Studies Review, 67(1), 112–131. https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2023.45
Nwankwọ, I. (2022). Ambivalence in the stand-up acts of Nigeria's Klint da Drunk and Mr Paul. Journal of the African Literature Association, 16(2), 332–347. https://doi.org/10.1080/21674736.2022.2067735
Nwankwọ, I. (2023). Joke performance mechanics in Nigerian stand-up comedy. South African Theatre Journal, 34(2), 99–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2022.2051731
Nwankwọ, I. (2024). Politics, jokes and power in Africa: The view from stand-up comedy. African Studies, 82(3–4), 264–280. https://doi.org/10.1080/00020184.2023.2299222
Nyarota, G. (2023). Stand-up comedy and political commentary in Zimbabwe. Journal of Southern African Studies, 49(2), 289–307. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057070.2023.2187654
Obadare, E. (2020). Civil society in Nigeria: Historical and contemporary perspectives. Cambridge University Press.
Obadare, E. (2021). Pastoral power, clerical state: Pentecostalism, gender, and sexuality in Nigeria. University of Notre Dame Press.
Ogheneakpobor, E. E., & Mowarin, M. (2024). The language of Nigerian stand-up comedy. The European Journal of Humour Research, 12(2), 36–52. https://doi.org/10.7592/EJHR.2024.12.2.756
Ogundele, W. (2020). Yoruba popular theatre and the politics of cultural production. African World Press.
Oha, O. (2021). Comic commons: Shared frustration and national identity in Nigerian stand-up. Nokoko, 9, 45–63.
Olaniyan, T. (2021). Arrest the music! Fela and his rebel art and politics. Indiana University Press.
Olukotun, A. (2022). The media and democracy in Nigeria: A political economy approach. Palgrave Macmillan.
Otiono, N. (2022). Introduction: The aesthetics, politics, and cultural economy of African stand-up comedy. Nokoko, 10, v–xxii.
Papacharissi, Z. (2019). Affective publics: Sentiment, technology, and politics. Oxford University Press.
Phelan, P. (2019). Unmarked: The politics of performance. Routledge.
Roach, J. (2018). Cities of the dead: Circum-Atlantic performance. Columbia University Press.
Schechner, R. (2020). Performance studies: An introduction (4th ed.). Routledge.
Stallybrass, P., & White, A. (2018). The politics and poetics of transgression. Cornell University Press.
Taylor, D. (2019). The archive and the repertoire: Performing cultural memory in the Americas. Duke University Press.
Tsaaior, J. T. (2022). The logic of laughter and the ecology of ethno-cultural representation in Nigerian stand-up comedy. Nokoko, 10, 1–17.
Ude, C. Q., Chukwu, E. A., & Ugwu, E. C. (2025). Humour representation of socio-political issues: Analysing illocutionary acts in some Nigerian social media skits. Awka Journal of English Language and Literary Studies, 12(4), 38–58.
Willems, W. (2022). Beyond resistance: Humour and political work in Africa. African Affairs, 121(484), 345–364. https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adac015
Yin, R. K. (2018). Case study research and applications: Design and methods (6th ed.). Sage.
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.