Myth and Ideological Resistance in Nigerian Meme Culture: A Semiotic Analysis of “No Gree for Anybody"

The phrase “No gree for anybody” emerged in early 2024 as a widely circulating slogan in Nigerian digital spaces. Rooted in Nigerian Pidgin, the expression extends beyond its literal meaning to index defiance, self-assertion, and resistance to everyday socio-political constraints. This study examines how “No gree for anybody” is semiotically constructed and circulated through memes as a form of everyday digital resistance. Drawing on Barthes’ theory of myth and Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar, the study analyses a purposive sample of thirty memes collected from Nairaland, Instagram, and X. The analysis focuses on denotative, connotative, and mythic meanings, as well as the organisation of visual and verbal resources. The findings show that the memes function as multimodal sites of ideological struggle, where resistance is naturalised through humour, symbolism, and visual salience. Rather than operating as overt political protest, the memes challenge institutional authority, satirise public figures, and expose social contradictions across domains such as governance, religion, security, education, and commerce. By foregrounding the Nigerian context, this study contributes to digital discourse and semiotic scholarship by demonstrating how locally grounded meme practices transform everyday grievances into shared ideological critique, enabling civic engagement and sustaining forms of ordinary resistance within precarious socio-political environments