‘Trader-Money’ and Palliative Metaphors in Dipo Kalejaiye’s Essential Commotion

Nigeria faces numerous challenges largely due to power-hungry leaders who have failed to provide the necessary creative force for progress similar to other formerly colonised African nations. The country also witnessed a considerable disrespect for the sanctity of human life, owing primarily to insurgency, corruption, poverty, epileptic power supply, fuel hikes, incessant workers’ strikes, electoral fraud, and compromise of the judiciary and other law enforcement agencies. Playwrights claim that successive regimes have stolen the country's economy without offering useful ideas while employing state machinery to crush opposition, notwithstanding their ineptitude. Dipo Kalejaiye’s play, Essential Commotion, intricately explores Nigeria’s socio-political and economic landscape, focusing on the distribution of essential commodities which can be likened to the recent government’s palliative measures and the ‘Trader-Money’ initiative, designed to assist small-scale traders. This paper examines and metaphorically critiques the Nigerian government's distribution of relief materials and palliatives as a façade by highlighting their short-term political use, and neglect of systemic issues that underpinned societal disparities The study utilises the qualitative, descriptive and interpretative method and adopts Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser’s Cultural Materialist theory as the framework to examine the ideology and power interplay shaping government economic interventions. Foucault’s power and discourse concepts illuminate ‘Trader-Money’ as a social control mechanism and empowerment ruse whilst Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) underscores its dependency on the state and underlying corruption in the play’s textual analyses. The discourse metaphorically condemns economic mismanagement, poverty and other indices of corrupt practices in government’s distribution of relief materials as palliative measures. Without concrete and substantial reforms that genuinely address the needs of the populace, they will continue to be exploited and impoverished. The paper concludes that citizens should advocate accountability and meaningful reform that genuinely addresses the needs of the populace from their leaders. It thus invites the audience to reflect on the broader implications and limitations of such interventions engaged as short term political tools rather than long-lasting solutions.