Abstract

Nigeria is one of the world’s largest oil producers having rich oil resources in many parts of the country, some yet to be harvested. In spite of her position in the oil industry, Nigeria’s oil products are either not sufficient for domestic use or are too exorbitant for the general populace. The absence of a present as well as questionable governance have been subjects of vociferous debate creating the heated impression of Naija na Helele! Coupled with dwindling economic fortunes, the rise of feudal politicians, the banality of liberal democratic practice, the increasing uncertainties, and acts of violence, have created disempowerment, identity loss, and new decorations of exclusion involving both the familiar and strange leading to Nigeria government’s dive toward the market governance. The move toward market governance has generated various forms of resistance or reflection, the joke culture being one of such forms. This work, using the incongruous juxtaposition theory, interrogates the production and performance of verbal and digital jokes and the implications of the government’s move to other sources of revenue generation, thereby reversing the state’s provision of social services and necessitating the ‘ran out of gas’ jokes. The finding is that the market governance may sound messianic being invested with a transparency to transform the oddities of the moment but its practice, like that of liberal democracy, has the enthralling potential of the contemporary consuming passions, of eroding and not endorsing, and of statis not metamorphosis.

Keywords: Gas, Capitalism, Neoliberalism, Government, Market governance, Nigeria