The ‘primitive’ villager discovers the lights of Lagos metropolis: a semiotico-philosophical reading of Muyideen Ayinde’s O Om’Eko and Femi Adebayo’s Jelili

A good number of storytellers depict the villager’s journey or relocation to the urban city as a psycho-intellectual transition from ‘primitivism’ to modernism, or a life-changing experience. Indeed, many Nigerian novelists, popular singers and cineastes among other storytellers rely on the popular dictum, which stipulates that a journey to a new world is always a didactic experience or a great opportunity to learn. These storytellers also bring to their narratives Plato’s allegory of the cave by representing the villager who moves into the megacity as an explorer and self-learner who, through his fateful exodus and embrace of various urban popular cultures, leaves the darkness and ‘primitivism’ of the village to enter the light of modernism. This entrance into the light of urbanity is marked by life-changing discoveries and forms of emancipation. In many Nollywood films, this trope is manifested through storylines that depict the life of a naive villager who leaves his hometown to seek greener pastures in a big Nigerian urban city, notably Lagos, Abuja or Enugu. The depiction of the villager’s urban experience is mainly constructed with the aid of popular myths and images of specific Nigerian megacities. Using a semiotico-philosophical reading of Muyideen Ayinde’s O Om’Eko (2012) and Femi Adebayo’s Jelili (2012), this paper seeks to illustrate the trope mentioned above. The paper is divided into three main parts. In the first place, it provides a theoretical framework on Plato’s allegory of the cave and how it is reflected in some films. In the second place, the paper explores popular Nigerian imaginations about villagers’ experiences with Lagos. In its last part, the paper addresses O Om’Eko’s and Jelili’s representation of the enlightenment and emancipation of the villager in Lagos.