Introduction

Headloading is the practice of moving loads to desired destinations by carrying them on the head. It is a practice known across Africa and several developing countries. Prompted by a recent social media conversation around social-political and economic issues in Nigeria, a dimension of headloading practice is explored in this paper with a focus on its subaltern implications. In the social media conversation, the Lazy Nigerian Youth (LNY), the use of headloading images was one of the ways youths responded to a political statement that seemed to label the young people as lazy.

A close encounter with the LNY conversation on Facebook changed my perception of the social practice of headloading. The narrative developed from Nigeria’s ex-President Muhammadu Buhari’s speech at the Commonwealth Business Forum, in London, in 2018. In his response to a question at the event, the president said: “We have a very young population. More than 60% of the population is below the age of 30. A lot of them haven’t been to school and they are claiming that Nigeria has been an oil-producing country, therefore, they should sit and do nothing and get housing, healthcare, education free” (Amah and Adebayo, April 21 (2018): 111).

Posts and comments of different kinds trailed the speech as many Nigerian ‘youths’ felt maligned and, in response, leveraged the power and affordances of social media platforms, especially Facebook, to vent their disapproval. While the LNY narrative may differ from a weaponised kind of social media conversation known of movements like #PutSouthAfricaFirst (Bezuidenhout 2020), there is a comparable ‘détournement’ with the type of image-making described by Kiziltunali (2018) in which government’s attack was visually redirected. Drawing from the LNY narrative and related artworks, the concern of this study is to expressly explore how representations of headloaders stand as subaltern voices that echo in different parts of Nigeria, Africa, and the Global South.

This social media conversation, the LNY, in which headloading was a visual response to a socio-political statement connects with my experience in headloading culture. Growing up in Nigeria, I participated in headloading practice alongside other family members, carrying farm produce, firewood, and water containers for a few kilometres, and hawking in rural markets. Generally, hawking by headloading is still well-known in Nigeria and across Africa, especially among rural and semi-rural residents who move to trade in the suburbs, towns, cities (See Figs. 1 and 2). Sullivan (2010) maintains that our experiences and encounters are adaptive ways of human thoughts, actions, and understanding. Hence, through headloading practice and its representation, we can critique knowledge and move towards deeper insight and understanding of the world around us.

Fig. 1: “Lagos 2007” series 1, Victor Politis Photograph.
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This piece instantiates the headloading activity of hawking in which several Nigerians engage themselves as a means of daily livelihood. This kind of hawking thrives inside Nigeria’s expansive urban markets where commuter traffic is low.

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Fig. 2: “Lagos 2007” series 2, Victor Politis, 2008.
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Photograph. This is one of the examples of street hawking in which headloading is involved. The trader carries her wears, especially edible items on the head and traverses long distances of the streets until the goods are exhausted or night falls.

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This study is, therefore, rooted in visuality and conceptualisation of headloading as reflecting the structure of power and class in which the subalterns are hugely ‘sufferheads’. The visual data for this study come from various hawking, loading and unloading images of headloading and other relevant illustrations. The interpretation of these images and the social practice of headloading have also been positioned within an inevitable auto-ethnographic reflexivity. The way these images were used in LNY, and my previous experiences have motivated this study, providing the standpoint that headloading imageries are symbolic and hugely laden with significations. The objective is to establish that headloading signifies a form of social structure, the subaltern.

Literature review

Previous studies on headloading point to its earliest function, porterage service, prevalence among youths and women, and its relationship with packaging. Ogunremi (1975: 1) underscores headloading as a practice of human porterage—“the oldest and most widespread traditional form of transport, not only in Nigeria but also in many other parts” of the world by which people moved themselves and goods. By referring to headloading as intermediate mobility, Porter et al. (2007) substantiate Ogunremi’s perspective. They further used headloading to define livelihood patterns among youths and women.

Porter et al. (2013) investigate the health impacts of pedestrian headloading in sub-Saharan Africa regarding women and children. They show the various headloading types and their complexities and identify five major components of the potential harm of the practice: energy costs, long-term bio-mechanical impact, risk of acute injury, maternal and foetal health, and psychosocial effects. With proper weight management and packaging of the loads, it seems carriers would encounter reduced body damage or, at the least, know when to stop.

While connecting headloading with mobility, Osborn underpins headloading practice within the history of containerisation in West Africa (Osborn 2018). The idea of carrying loads on the head is associated with indigenous societies. As such, headloading has been stereotypically a picturesque and wall-decorating representation (Ubogu 2016), which usually offers the Western ‘other’ a romanticized perception of the indigenous people, especially Africans (Hall 1997).

It is essential, therefore, to see how the visuality of headloading opens into the context of this study for a heightened interpretive discourse. In brief, Porter et al. suggest a more comprehensive study to examine the related social impact of the load-carrying practice. They write: “It is clearly essential to understand the socio-economic, cultural and institutional contexts within which headloading takes place” (Porter et al. 2013: 95,96). It is evident then, that existing studies do not provide a connection between headloading practice, representation, and economic and socio-political spaces.

Exploring headloading from a humanistic perspective will help to create an inclusive conceptual, ideological, and socio-political communication with particular reference to Nigeria. Therefore, there is the potential of the headload concept to afford extended communication through discourse reading of selected images, bearing in mind how headloading was deployed in the Lazy Nigeria Youth protest. Overall, the question is, how does headloading as a social practice among Nigerian people signal a social structure of the subaltern? What ways of seeing and representations can be used to position headloading as such? These questions then informs my discursive inquiry.

Methods: visual data and interpretivism

This study is qualitative and it applies interpretivist and discursive approaches. Interpretivist research seeks to understand the meanings behind human agencies, practices, behaviours, beliefs, and perceptions (Bertram and Christiansen 2014). The ontological assumption of interpretive study posits fluidity and non-objectivity within a system of meaning (Du Plooy-Cilliers 2014) while further validating a social experience and sense of reality. It also follows a discursive domain of inquiry in visual arts research (Sullivan 2010).

The discursive method is a meaning-making dimension that “incorporates the empiricist focus on structure and the interpretivist emphasis on agency” as “visual forms are used as data to investigate meanings, and as sources of data” (Sullivan 2010: 108,107). Some ‘dialectical’ elements of visual research are also expressed. The study then becomes conversational and dialogical using language-based strategies such as metaphors and metonymies to challenge meaning. Such visual tropes redirected from linguistic schemata are used to reify ideas and to construct meaning.

This study draws visual data or visual texts as references from online sources, and exhibition catalogues to provide a practical direction for meaning-making and communication of the headloading concept. ‘Texts’ include all semiotic modes beyond verbal or written texts (Janks 1997). Various texts used in this study include photographs, and images of artworks. The visual images are purposively selected from Facebook, artworks and the author’s own practice.

The selection of the images is narrowed down using a purposive sampling technique, considering the available options and those relevant to the study’s discussion, research objectives, and thematic potential (Gentles et al. 2015; Etikan et al. 2016). Figure 3 is an image selected from Facebook, while Figs. 4 and 5 are artists’ works drawn from exhibition catalogues. Figure 4 is part of the author’s representation on the headloading, and Fig. 5 is a photograph of a hawker.

Fig. 3: Facebook, April 18, 2018, posted by Oloche Okwori with the text.
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“‘Lazy’ Nigerian youth waiting for oil money.” Retrieved on April 20, 2018 from: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1869683626383971&set=a.101637556521929&type=3&theatre. This is one of the most viral images used on Facebook in the Lazy Nigerian Youth conversation.

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Fig. 4: People of the Night, 1985.
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Pen & Ink. Obiora Udechuckwu. This is an illustration in which the Nigerian artist, Obiora Udechukwu explored the concept of nightsoilmen with reference to the prevailing situation in Nigeria at the time.

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Fig. 5: Nightsoilman I, 1964. Painting, Obiora Udechuckwu.
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In this painting the artist expressed his experience of this headloading practice, not long after Nigeria’s independence.

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Theoretical framework: discourse, critical discourse and the visual

This study could be framed using various analytical tools. Yet, the choice of discourse framing provides an ample possibility for speaking to the visual data beyond their forms and specific imageries, especially considering the socio-political focus of the study. Visual studies have been known to adopt and adapt analytical tools from various sources outside the humanities (Borgdorf 2012). The use of critical discourse analysis here is adapted to provide a visual discourse while being grounded with elements of visual metaphors as espoused in the works of Ortony (1979, 1993); Lakoff and Johnson (1980); Forceville and Urios-Aparisi (2009); Wang (2014).

Discourse as a theory has a long history dating back to several centuries. It is traceable to the fields of humanities and social sciences, especially in the study of language, literature and public dialogue (van Dijk, 1985), and has been a potent tool in the hands of linguists and other literary analysts. Gee (1990, 2008: 3) defines ‘discourse’ as a “way of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking, and often reading and writing, that are accepted as instantiations of particular identities…” The development of the discourse framework has strategically included the works of authors such as Leo Spitzer (1887–1960), Michel Foucault (1926–1984), and Zellig Harris (1909–1992).

The above understanding defines the connection and commonality between discourse and critical discourse analysis [CDA]. Critical discourse analysis, employed in this study, hugely plays on the discursive engagement of society, political inequality, power abuse or domination. In discourse, meanings are connected in particular ways, called discursive formation. This combines with the concept of intertextuality, showing the diverse forms through which a discourse can be articulated. Rose (2001) defines intertextuality as ways that the meanings of one discursive text depend on the meanings carried by other images and texts.

As an important approach to discourse making, critical discourse analysis developed rather differently from the field of critical linguistics (Janks 1997). Norman Fairclough (Fairclough 1989; 1995), as a vital figure in the development of CDA, derived linguistic and ideological influences from the works of such authors as Michael Halliday (1978; 2003) and Michel Foucault (1972). Foucault’s idea has dwelt on discursive interpretations and effects of social practices. One of his primary concerns, which streams into critical discourse reading, is examining ideologies and power relations involved in discourse (Mills 2003). This primarily deals with the “latent type of everyday beliefs, frequently appearing disguised as conceptual metaphors and analogies” (Wodak 2014: 306). For Wodak, as a proponent of the theory, the word ‘critical’ in CDA is associated with currents of thoughts that use rigorous rational procedures. It goes beyond criticizing others to self-reflection and self-critiquing.

Although he focused on linguistic text, it is important to see how Norman Fairclough’s position affects the production of meaning in critical discourse (Fairclough 1995). He wrote, “Texts are social spaces in which two fundamental social processes simultaneously occur: cognition and representation of the world and social interaction. A multifunctional view of the text is, therefore, essential.” It is important to underpin art as an element of visual discourse and to show how that works (Fairclough 1995: 6). In this study, visual representations are taken to function as text, and in this case, it is art as visual language and metaphor. Rose (2001) argues for the possibility of thinking of visuality as a kind of discourse in which visuality itself can, in certain ways, conceal its subjects and forms within its field of vision.

Considering the various visual representations available as visual data, there is a need for a broader interpretation of the visuality of headloading, as this study has done. Although the visual data used in this study are based in social and cultural contexts, discourse allows meaning to be sought in context beyond the text. So, the study deals with decoding and providing an understanding around the visual texts. In order to explain the representations of headloading in social media narratives such as the LNY’s, one must understand the kind of linguistic expressions used in Nigeria especially resulting from the pidginization of English.

Clearly, then, Fairclough proposed three dimensions of discursive analysis which are vital in analyzing social practices and socio-political discourses (Fairclough 1989; Wang 2014). This approach offers a powerful tool for deconstructing the ideology, power, and dominance encoded in texts and linking them to societal issues of macro concern. Deriving from Fairclough’s three-pronged approach, Wang (2014) reconstitutes the analytical tool to suit visual texts by directing dimensions of the linguistic analysis on images. It includes ‘visual discourse,’ which involves a graphic description of the images. This is the text analysis at the micro-level, at which the various aspects of the visual text are considered. Visual tropes such as visual metaphors are at this point identified, and explored at the discursive level. As an intervening concept in this study, the idea of visual metaphor holds that meanings and expressions are aptly framed in nonliteral language or representation (Vicente 2020). Metaphors are figures of thought, and thoughts are expounded through discourse.

The meso-level of the analysis leads to ‘discursive practice’ in which visual interpretation is made. It is the process analysis involving the means of text production, distribution, and consumption. The process of interpretation at this level derives from the viewer. This level of meaning-making is largely subjective and reflexive, yet expresses people’s experiences. The third part is the ‘macro-level’, which covers social analysis or explanation of the social context of a representation. Fairclough (2003: 22) has maintained that “language is not just a medium of communication, it is also a site of social practice….”

In summary, the three structures of the analysis are description, interpretation, and explanation. They lead to a recontextualisation of the practice as intertextual and interdiscursive elements are used to broaden the discourse to a broader social context. The last part of the analytical structure is largely relevant in this study for articulating the ideological essences of the headloading representations.

Analysis of visual texts

This section presents a tripodal breakdown and analysis of images using critical discourse analysis in a visual context. The analysis covers textual description of the visual texts, discursive interpretation of the visual texts, and the ideological explanation of the social practice expressed in the texts. The metaphorical parts of the visual images are underscored in their description and discourse (Wang 2014).

Description of visual texts

The description of visual forms and elements with which the designs or images are composed are given. Design compositions are usually defined by elements such as colours, lines, shapes, and typography, among others. They are organized with the guidance of design principles (Bradley 2013, 2018). The images (Figs. 3–6) are described as follows.

Lazy Nigerian youth waiting for oil money

The image, ‘Lazy Nigerian youth waiting for oil money’ (Fig. 3) was posted or reposted) on Facebook by the user on April 18, 2018. It was part of several images used by Facebook users or “youths” in Nigeria to respond to the comment that the Nigerian youths were referred to as sitting down ‘lazily’ or doing nothing. The use of the image in this context is symbolic. In attempting to ‘refute’ the notion that the Nigerian youth were lazy, this image was used allegorically and ironically. While the youth ‘agree’ that they were lazy, the post shows young people in a laborious task.

This photograph shows an energetic and well-built young man behind a truck on whose head are being loaded five 50 kg bags of cement by his co-workers while he controls the bags with his hands. The colours of this image are drab, showing the ashy particles of the Portland cement. Although the face lacks definition, brightness, and contrast (showing low modality), it expresses a ‘demand’ on the viewer (that is, the young man is facing the viewer, showing eye contact) (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006). The image in its frontal pose demands a certain kind of social interaction from the viewer as it looks directly into the viewer’s eyes. Perhaps it requires palliative support for the overweight headloading. This medium shot shows the main character and the surrounding objects giving the viewer an understanding of what is happening in the piece (Studiobinder 2020). The photograph may have gained prominence in the online conversation due to the incredible weight arranged on the headloader. The brand name on the cement bags shown in this photograph is known in Nigeria as belonging to Dangote Group. Words on the cement bags and Facebook comments provide a complementarity for the image itself, and this aids the interpretation given in the discussion section.

People of the night and Nightsoilman

The two images (Figs. 4, 5) refer to the same kind of headloading, which is now dated. It is important to note that the practice shown in this piece refers to a social experience of Nigerian people. The term ‘people of the night’ as used here is a local parlance referring to headloaders whose job was to handle nightsoil during Nigeria’s colonial and early postcolonial era. They were so referred because they waited for the cover of darkness to do their business, which entailed going a distance to dispose of human excrement.

‘People of the Night’ (Fig. 4) is a rugged and curvilinear illustration of a human head carrying a load. This pen and ink drawing, stylistically rendered in lines, and scantily shaded, perhaps shows the nightsoilman returning from his nocturnal business. Here, one can observe the handling of shaded negative and positive spaces. The main subject is shown in a close-up in the foreground, while other headloaders are rather abstractly represented in the background. This piece shows two Uli signs – at the upper left and lower left corners. With its origin from Igbo indigenous adornment system, Uli was enacted into the artistic paradigm of the post-war Nsukka Art School (Morgan et al. 2017).

In “Nightsoilmen 1” (Fig. 5), two or more individuals are seen– one in the foreground, in a close-up, with a load on the head and a lantern in hand. Others could be seen represented in a distance on the right. The painting is mainly rendered in bright yellow, ochre, and white colours to show the light field needed to navigate the nocturnal pathways. At the edges of this piece are applied brown tones showing the dispersed darkness of the night.

Moreover, in these images (Figs. 4 and 5), the artist acknowledges the instances of containerisation, loading, and transporting systems for which headloading is known. Key elements of the nightsoil job are evident: buckets, brushes, lamps, and head covers, among other things. It is important to note that the headgear possibly helped disguise the carrier, who is not usually proud of this profession, as well as cover him from splashes of excrement. This is a subaltern experience.

Describing Global North on South

Subaltern experiences largely concerns dwellers on the Global South. The notion of ‘Global North on South’ as a conceptual and ideological representation of headloading is explored in this section to express relevant experiences and associations between the two global sides. It represents the relationship between the headloader and the load. Divided into two parts, the upper and the lower, this piece (Fig. 6) is defined by the density of colours in the background. Its chromatic features include dark and light tones in the background, with red as the most dominant of the central subject, brightened with tones of yellows, and grey. Between the concentric spheres at the upper part of this piece and the figurehead at the lower part is a relatively transparent map of Africa, with South America and Asia at the sides.

Fig. 6: Global North on South, 2020, Digital art, Trevor Morgan.
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This piece is my own practice in which I coalesced different discursive ideas of the headloading practice. It points to various implicatures of the practice.

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Two subjects are most prominent in this piece: a red figural form, which is anthropomorphous, and a set of concentric spheres and squares. The head of this anthropomorphous being is shaped into a rounded square with a relatively flat face. It is crouched under a seeming weight of an heaload; its neck is squeezed, with eyes crossed—eyeballs looking in opposite directions. Two hands are represented, one is raised to support the headload while the other hangs down.

The spheres of the headload in this artwork are positioned on a black background. They are composed of shades of grey and red and outlined by subdued tones. Textblock in this piece reads, ‘all men are born equal but some are more equal than others alluding to George Orwell’s Animal Farm; ‘some were made eunuchs by others’; ‘others were dwarfed by some.’ The presence of these words signals a level of literacy. The textblocks also contain two words, latently positioned, ‘rich’ and ‘poor’.

Discursive interpretations

The discursive dimension of this study takes the visual images beyond their formal properties, opening connotative interpretation for secondary meanings of the images. At this point, the images’ symbolic and metaphorical characterisations are explored. On the critical visual discourse framing, the discursive processes involve the production, distribution, and consumption. The production discusses how the producer presents the images. The distribution involves how the images are prepared for the audience’s acceptance of the ideologies encoded by the producer. At the same time, the consumption concerns itself with how the viewers unconsciously assimilate the decoded ideologies (Wang 2014). To begin with, I give a discursive interpretation of the LNY headloading image.

Lazy Nigerian youth narrative

The use of the piece (Fig. 3) in ‘Lazy’ Nigerian Youth’ conversation was a form of social media ‘protest.’ Several authors have investigated social media (in this case, Facebook) as a tool of public protest and resistance (Downing 2008; Ibrahim 2013; Woodstock 2014; Agbo 2016). In protest against the ex-president’s description that the youths were ‘lazy’—doing nothing, waiting for free resources, young people took to their social media handles to showcase their struggle and means of livelihood, which are presumably unconnected to free ‘national cake.’ This visual protest and disclaimer included photographs of hawking, headloading, and handiworks, among other activities and occupations. The incredible headload in Fig. 3 seems to be the height of the visual protest amongst different socio-economic practices displayed in the online resistance. Visuality at present is advanced by modern technology and the ability of social media users to manipulate and retool images for different purposes using various photo-editing applications. So, in many occasions, it becomes difficult to ascertain the original sources of images.

The title of Fig. 3 defines the image and its social context. The five persons seen in this photograph are ‘working hard’ to offload the goods on the truck as a part of the many ‘hustlings’ for which young people in Nigeria are known. Although they may be used to ‘weight-carrying’ business, this is an outrageously heavy load for an average person. So one can infer that they are really on ‘hard labour.’ The seemingly ‘overwhelming’ burden raises questions about the humanness and sensitivity of people in carrying or abetting such a tremendous load on the head. These ‘hard workers’ seem to prioritise pecuniary benefits above human health.

Most comments trailing this post used the word “lazy” somewhat sarcastically. However, the image reveals an attempt to eke out a living. Here we see a kind of dying to live. It shows a struggle for survival. One would wonder how much could be realised from this labour. While this image was used ironically, it is a metaphor for a lived suffering and underscores the different kinds of jobs or, rather, servitude people experience to survive. It connects aptly with situations across towns and cities in Nigeria where people scavenge unhealthy heaps of rubbish to sort out recyclable discards for money. It becomes antithetical to premise survival on suffering.

Various survival instincts known in different societies and background find expression in the problem of weights and burdens borne daily in Nigeria (as shown in Fig. 3). Nigeria’s teaming population seems to lack several basic infrastructures, which becomes overt when economic recessions occur. The burden and struggle to stay alive, feed, and settle bills send the poor scavenging for various means livelihood. Such dimensions of struggle are heightened by the kind of family relationships and dependency seen in Nigeria. Undoubtedly, the burden pressurizes, not only the families, but the nation itself (Agbo 2018), and this accounts for various levels of discontent in Nigeria. For instance, the tone of some of the comments in Fig. 3 emerges figuratively regarding their struggle. GBA comments: ‘If this is what it takes to be hardworking, then I humbly admit “I am lazy.”’ ‘Must I kill myself before I die?’ Another writes, ‘This is suicide not hardworking’.

A pertinent point emerging from this representative image of the LNY narrative is perhaps the utter difference in socio-economic status it conveys—that which exists between the labourers and the business magnate, the African richest of this time, Alihu Dangote (Forbes 2020), who maintains a vast economic fortune in Nigeria and across Africa. The LNY images stand as a visual metaphor for the stratification of society between the bourgeois top class and the low-income working class of individuals and families, and between the developed nations of the Global North and the poor developing Global South nations that are socially, politically and economically vulnerable.

It is therefore noteworthy that this piece and the accompanying comments on it (and other LNY posts) are references to the voices of the subalterns, who have been ‘forced’ to struggle under ‘headloads’ in order to survive socio-economically or otherwise. The subaltern voices resound in despair, fate, and angst through these visual imageries. They do not only speak to the few Nigerian haves but to any who cares to hear and help lift ‘the collective headloads.’

Vassalage and nightsoilmen

The reification of the subaltern voices continues here. Nightsoil headloaders, hawking headloaders as well as domestic headloaders connect with other menials who ‘hustle’ for daily living in Nigeria. They define the idea and context of vassalage as used in this section. The conditions of service for vassals were subjugating. While vassal servitude was categorically imposed by the other – the lords, headloading, today, seems to be more of a ‘self-imposed’ servitude, howbeit, occasioned by inevitable necessities of social welfare as well as deficiencies of the government. In many ways, headloaders and vassals would usually choose to extricate themselves from the practice if a better socio-economic option were available. As represented in Figs. 4 and 5 headloading stands as a metaphor for social and economic servitude: headloading reimages such servitude.

Beyond its reference to headloading practice, the expression ‘People of the Night’ also alludes to night marauders, thieves, and individuals whose ‘work’ thrives under the cover of the night. In all, there is a sense in which the term and the practice signals a social and power classing of the low, the poor, the illiterate, and those at the bottom of society’s hierarchy. The artist deftly positons the piece (Fig. 5) within its title using the subject’s head cover and the linear sweep on its face. He further underscores the secrecy and the facelessness required for an effective service, timing, stigma, psychology and sensibility, health-consciousness, and the aesthetic of the nightsoil business, as well as the menial stance associated with this ‘economic practice’ (Udechukwu 2002).

Furthermore, ‘People of the Night’ expresses living at the lowest rung of social status with minimal possibilities, which results from lack of formal training for professional skills or willpower to improve in status. This representation points understanding to how headloading with its associated expressions, signifies shades of modern day social, economic and political subjugation. One might think about mental colonisation or social conditioning as a tool to keep the service of the lower class. As an instance, ‘better’ remunerations may be promised or threats heightened to keep the vassal. Colonisation, therefore becomes an essential subject in the discourse of subalternity (Suret-Canale 1962) and headloading stands as a code for power relations.

Moreover, as a historical development in headloading, Udechukwu (2002: 102) thought of nightsoil business as “one of the fallouts of urbanisation” and of colonisation in Nigeria. The business was a means of sustenance for the society’s low. If one agrees with Udechukwu that nightsoil practice is a fallout of urbanisation and colonisation, it becomes clear how power plays out in our society: some people rise on the ‘fall’ of others. Furthermore, he relates these characterisations of the ‘nightsoilmen’ concept to the several social divides and (dis)connections of society in which the upper class debases those at the lower social status. The scenario here reflects a bigger picture of the relationship between the ‘Global North and South.’

Explaining ‘Global North on South’

Global North on South, Fig. 6, is compositionally divided into the upper part, made up of black and dense tones, representing the North, and the lower part, rendered in red and lighter hues, representing the South. It describes places, positions, and peculiarities that define and differentiate Global North from South nations. The central figure in this piece is presented as an anthropomorphous South, upon whose head the northern hemisphere lies. By the weight it carries, as shown in this piece, it has acquired certain deformity, perhaps mental, psychological, or geolocational (bodily).

The dense dark tone at the upper part of this piece is a representation of the weight carried by the central subject, symbolising the South as a headloader (Bradley 2013, 2018). The maps of the Global South continents – Africa, Asia, and South America, are shown in red. Red, here, indicates bleeding on the headloader, the Global South. Many things could be referred to as bleeding for Africa and the rest of the Global South, which are political, economic and infrastructural as well as exploitation and corruption as bleeding.

Furthermore, the fact that the Global South has a noticeable level of education is recognised, as symbolised by the textual composition at the lower part of the background of this piece. Yet the Global North boasts of higher formal scholarship infrastructure, as shown by the upper dark part of this work. Conceivably, this underscores the fact that literacy and experience are fundamental features of diplomacy and deception. More discursive points are extended in the following section.

A Subaltern and social discourse of headloading via ‘Global South on North’

The ideological explanation of headloading is driven in this study by the piece, ‘Global North on South’ (Fig. 6), for an implicative interpretation of subalternity. ‘Subalternity, generally indicates subordination and marginalisation. Beverley (1999) defines the term to refer to conditions of subjugation rising as effects of colonisation, and the concept has broad usage in postmodern discourse, “defined in descriptive terms according to a particular marginalized subject position in any given cultural or social context” (Louai 2012: 4).

So subalternity manifests when dealing with the coloniser and the colonised (which to a good extent refers to Global North and South). It deals with the effects of colonisation on the colonised which manifest in various forms of economic, social, racial, linguistic, or cultural dominance and, as such, shows relations of power. In support, Zaib (2015) synonymises the concept with such terms as ‘subordinated,’ ‘downtrodden,’ ‘marginalized’ and ‘oppressed.’ While the discourse in this section runs on the connection between Global South and North, it more intently redirects understanding to subtalternity as ‘metaphorised’ by the Lazy Nigeria Youth headloading representation (Fig. 3).

Beyond its geographical location, the Global South is a social, political, and economic construct of developmentally disadvantaged nation-states of Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Oceania (Mahler 2017). These regions are different from the rich and developed Global North nations, which do not need ‘aid’ (Dados and Connell 2012). Dados and Connell argue that the “use of the phrase Global South marks a shift from a central focus on development or cultural difference toward an emphasis on geopolitical relations of power” (2012: 1). Although the writers tried to minimise ‘development’ as part of the focus in defining Global South, power relations and control cannot be divorced from elements that place a people on advantage.

As could be observed in Africa, and through the LNY visual protest, the idea of subalternity vis-à-vis the Global South is formed around several pessimistic identities: struggle, low democracies, the colonised, malnutrition, low-income, marginalised, poor urbanity, and informal settlements (Mitlin and Patel 2014; Hollington et al. 2015). Although, the LNY protest was to disclaim dependency on government’s resources and to reassert self, one could perceive the neediness and the discontent on the young people as represented by their menial occupations and suffering under headloads. There is, hence, a connection between the Nigerian youths in LNY protest who felt socio-economically imperilled under their government and the subaltern people of the Global South under forms of Western (or Global Northern) imperialism, previously or presently.

Global North on South (Fig. 6) is, therefore, a visual metaphor for the prevailing socio-political and humanistic intersectionality and thoughts between and around the Global South and North. The piece only provides an opening for discourse beyond itself. It lends credence to the social formation and inequalities of our capitalist society, the structure of economic and political domination and classism—the exploiter over the exploited and the ruler over the ruled (Hodge and Kress 1988). The ideological understanding of the North as load (top) and the South as carrier (down) subsists in many socio-political instances.

Refer to the northern and southern parts of Nigeria. Basic historical knowledge of Nigeria as an amalgamated entity shows how its north has continued to be a political, educational, economic and security ‘load’ on the south from which Nigeria’s ‘national cake,’ the crude oil, comes. This is notwtistanding that the north has, perhaps, had the most prominent roles in Nigeria’s leadership (Falola and Heaton 2008; Ojo 2020; Jaiyeola and Choga 2021). Development across Nigeria is mainly funded from ‘Nigeria’s oil’ revenue (Adebayo 2018). Or put otherwise, huge sums of oil revenue have been deployed to combat notorious terrorism of the Boko Haram sect, banditry, and Fulani herders violence rooted in the north (Morgan 2020; Buchanan 2015), and such huge revenues are more often shared as federal allocation across the states.

Furthermore, Global North on South (Fig. 6) implicates the colonization of the Global South nations, by which Africa has been reduced to various subaltern conditions. In particular, headloading was used as a tool to achieve expediency by the colonisers since means of mobility were low. Clearly, the colonisers of Nigeria and Africa are Global Northerners and indirectly became the burden. Although, headloading predates colonialism in Nigeria and Africa as a means of porterage (Ogunremi 1975; Osborn 2018), it provides symbolism for what is exerted by colonialism, and manifest in the subaltern.

The headloading concept reveals socio-political, humanistic, and ideological intersecting spaces of marginality and hegemonic discourses, as shown in Fig. 6 (Basu 2019). It underscores the effects of colonisation as having made Africa deficient in many ways. As a connotation of subalternity, the human subject in Fig. 6 represents the Global South as malformed, stunted and bleeding. Eyes are crossed, appearance is timid, vision is pale, the body is zombified, and the head is dropping under its load. As an essential characteristics of the Global South, Africa seems stuck in a colonised mentality of subjugation, inferiority, ignorance, and struggle while lacking apposite ‘negotiatory’ powers (Kwemo 2017). Writers such as Al Tinawi (2015); Ocheni and Nwankwo (2012); Wolff (2000); Suret-Canale (1962) provide relevant evidence on the effects of colonisation on Africa.

As an instance, the performance art of William Kentridge in 2018 explored the headloading of colonialised Africans during the First World War (Kentridge 2018). The headloaders’ meritorious efforts as porters of war materials, in which massive numbers died (Olusoga 2018), were not considered as needing recognition, thus showing the Global North’s desire to hide and subjugate Africa. As shown in Fig. 6, the carrier is zombified and eclipsed as it were developmentally by the ‘northern’ burden. This substantiates the power relation that exists between the two global opposites.

Even after independence, perhaps, in a neo-colonialist tendency, it has become difficult for African states to disengage as dominant sources of raw materials for many West’s manufactured products. Ocheni and Nwankwo (2012: 53) argue vigorously that the desire to have a supply of raw materials and search for new markets were primary reasons colonial dominance, exploitation and imperialism occurred. While lacking industrialization, due to the ‘assignment’ of the production of raw materials, “colonialism encouraged and intensified class struggle, tribalism, and ethnicity.” This internal struggle has continued to plague Africa. All of these inform the sources of corruption for which many African states are known, as colonialism introduced unhealthy capitalist competition among ethnics (Suret-Canale 1962; Al Tinawi 2015). It has thus led to the ‘divide and rule’ principle found in Africa and Nigeria (Ocheni and Nwankwo 2012).

Furthermore, the ideological presentation of the headload piece (Fig. 6) reflects an individual, a people, and a nation discontented, and disfigured by vassalage, corruption, and poverty. Poverty is perhaps the most appropriate word to articulate the dimensions bequeathed on a people framed as subalterns of the Global South. Although, from place to place, the concept of Global South or subalternity concerns various sizes of social, political, economic, educational, and technological deficiencies and ineptitude, poverty is usually uniform. For instance, writing from an obvious subaltern position of poverty from an Asian standpoint, Sianipar (2008: 92) underscores that:

Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not being able to go to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job; it is fear for the future, living one day at a time. Poverty is losing a child to illness brought about by unclean water. Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom.

Nigeria instantiates such a condition of poverty drawing from the fairly recent account by World Poverty Clock. Adebayo (2018: para. 1–4) captures the report:

Nigeria has overtaken India as the country with the largest number of people living in extreme poverty, with an estimated 87 million Nigerians, or around half of the country’s population, thought to be living on less than $1.90 a day. The findings, based on a projection by the World Poverty Clock and compiled by Brookings Institute, show that more than 643 million people across the world live in extreme poverty, with Africans accounting for about two-thirds of the total number…. Despite being the largest oil producer in Africa, Nigeria has struggled to translate its resource wealth into rising living standards.

More than 40% of Nigeria’s population was classified as poor in 2019 (NBS 2020). The current report by World Poverty Clock online puts Nigeria’s population of extreme poverty at 50%, which shows 14.5% of the global in extreme poverty (World Data Lab 2020; World Bank 2016). It is important to state that the Global South nations house the world’s extreme poor (Kharas et al. 2018). Therefore, these facts about Nigeria and Africa clarify why several means are explored for survival, including headloading in its various dimensions (See Figs. 5, 6). Understanding the various socio-humanistic reasons for the above situation in Nigeria further implicates the nature of African colonialism and subalternity.

Conclusion

This study has asserted that headloading practice is laden with significations, which, among other things, is subaltern. The symbolic meanings of headloading espoused in this study derived from the Lazy Nigeria Youths social media protest, in which visual images of the practice were used. The visual representation of headloading in the protest has been used to position the argument that the social practice is a metaphor for subaltern living. It is not a common practice in many developed countries to move loads by head, but in Africa and other Global South nations the practice persists, having been rooted in pre-colonial porterage and pre-motorized mobility.

Subalternity reflects several adversely engaging and entangling conditions of struggling and suffering. It points to those who occupy the lower social structure of the society, in which they are economically, politically, racially, and geographically disadvantaged or excluded from the upper echelon of power. The headload concept differentiates between structures and statuses of lived experiences in a world of social binary opposites as heightened by the effects of colonialism (Beverley 1999).

Generally, then the culture of headloading exudes levels of rurality, poverty, and lack of development behind urbanized societies where headloading is rarely practiced. At the basic level, as characterised by the Lazy Nigeria Youth protest, headloading crystalizes a complex relationship between Nigeria’s political class and the masses mostly comprised of youths. Beyond physical presence, Nigerian youths reified their suffering and struggle by protesting the Nigeria’s ex-president’s remarks through virtual representation of headloading. Their visual responses as subaltern voices referenced the carrying of heaviest headloads (Fig. 3) with reminiscences of the most absurd (Figs. 4, 5). The loadings also reflect the relationship between colonizer and colonized in many African countries that ‘underwent’ the perils of imperialism as shown in Fig. 6.

Ultimately, the relationship between headloading and subalternity, as implicated in this study, informs a general class structure which takes a cue from the forces and formats of Africa’s colonizers. It differentiates between the political class and the public and between the rich and the struggling, as signified by the Lazy Nigeria Youths’ visual protest. The rich and their children do not carry headloads, the poor do. The powerful political and socio-economical haves subjugate and exploit the powerless. While the latter function as labourers in the production process, the powerful rule (Wolff 2000) by making policies and providing minimum aids. Although one cannot blame all the deficiencies of the Global South on the North, Africa’s trajectory of development cannot be extricated from the impact of colonisation. And, Africa must not continue to bemoan its history.