Nigeria, March 31 -- I visited a farmer's market in the Takoma Park area of Washington DC in 2019 on my landlady's advice, who thought that as an African man, I would find some comfort in fresh vegetables and the open-air ambience I said I missed from Nigeria. When I arrived there, I found quiet, polite exchanges, the kind you might have in any supermarket aisle - transactional and unhurried, with none of the density I had expected.

If you visit a Nigerian five-day-a-week local market, you are immersed in something altogether different - culture moving through pricing conversations, the ethnic pride embedded in place names, the people's parliament that forms in the corners where sellers wait between buyers. These governance debates break...