“Aiyé l’òjà, ọ̀run n’ilé” is a lifelong Yorùbá adage that translates to ‘life is a marketplace, home lies beyond (heaven). It reflects on the transient nature of existence; life is full of trade-offs, people come and go. But beyond aiyé lies the greater good—a realm not of gain and loss, but of meaning. If aiyé is a marketplace, John’s market is its harsher, earthly version — governed by human-made structures that fail the vulnerable.
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Jeremiah John’s Market People is a visual poem with a limited omniscient narrator that recounts the activities of market people, navigating love, loss, longing, neglect due to minusculeness in the vast marketplace of life; Porcupine 1 (Praise Obafemi) and Porcupine 2 (Abisola Ojegbemi Emerald) as our narrator describes them. According to our narrator, Porcupine 1 is neglected absolutely, “nobody ask am wetin him want”. We follow Porcupine 2, a young woman who has just lost her lover, as she navigates healing in a patriarchal system.
This short film, beyond the seen, is a critique of the Nigerian housing system and its patriarchal constructs. The system is cruel to everyone, but more cruel to women. I was in Maiduguri sometime in January, and I encountered a young woman doing her National Youth Service (NYSC) there. She mentioned the struggles of being a single lady: you cannot have male visitors; you’re automatically placed on curfew. Through further research, I discovered it’s a common practice in many communities across Nigeria. This is precisely the atmosphere John renders.
Porcupine 2 encounters Porcupine 1 as she navigates house hunting. Our narrator draws from Schopenhauer’s “porcupine dilemma”: beings who need warmth but risk hurting each other when they move too close. John uses this as an emotional structure. “The market cold hands begin push the two porcupines together,” the narrator says, suggesting a system so hostile it forces intimacy. Both characters, needing warmth and shelter, decide to act as a couple to survive the system. John exposes the fragile potency of a “beating the system” remedy. “Beating the system” is never a substitute for reforming it.
Market People balances the sadness of its characters’ struggles with familiar humour, most evident in one of Porcupine 2’s house-hunting outings – where she’s told she cannot have a male visitor, must join morning devotion, and the landlady proudly declares the red paint a symbol of the blood of Jesus. Beyond humour, the film highlights multiple disappearances: her lover vanishes, she goes missing in her situational relationship with Porcupine 1, and eventually Porcupine 1 himself disappears as the apartment is inspected by new occupants. The cold of the marketplace seems to consume them.
Jeremiah John’s Market People experiments with jump cuts, shaky camera, surreal imagery, and voice-over narration — a documentary-like technique. In reminiscence of art film movements like the Dogme 95 and the French New Wave. Tunji Martin’s photography frames its subjects almost entirely with wide shots, dwarfing the characters, and treating them as tiny merchants in an indifferent market. The film treats cinema as art. It is raw, subtle, and tender. John’s influences and sensibilities are clear — film as art, philosophy, and activism. Its sparse dialogue is occasionally asynchronous with the images, blurring the lines between lazy filmmaking and minimalism, contradicting its documentary approach alongside. But fundamentally, Market People is a tender rumination on life’s marketplace, its people, and the various trade-offs within.
In the final images of the film, Porcupine 1 and Porcupine 2’s shared apartment is now vacant. A house agent and probable occupants (a couple) inspecting the place. The vacant room completes the proverb: “…market people come and go, but the marketplace remain.” In his final statement, our narrator states, “Nobody sabi how or where I take start, but tomorrow, I fit look another tori for this market people.” John informs an interest in telling more stories of market people.
Market People screened at the Ibadan Indie Film Awards, which took place November 27-29, 2025.
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