Rising up in Lagos, Nigeria’s industrial heart, Koye Kekere-Ekun needed to be a footballer.
Kekere-Ekun, 34, finally put his dream on pause to toe the household line and develop into a lawyer. Whereas working at a legislation agency in 2013, he acted on a random concept that modified every part.
“I simply posted a video of myself imitating this Indian Canadian comic, Russell Peters … And on the time, I suppose my followers responded to it — they preferred it,” he mentioned.
Now with greater than 100,000 followers throughout Twitter and Instagram, his movies, often laced with dry humor, generally go viral.
The comedian says he will get paid to create video content material on Twitter and Instagram by working with manufacturers to include a services or products in his comedy. When he as soon as requested his followers what they considered his “K10” model, “somebody simply replied and mentioned ‘Humor, sense, nonsense.’ And I assumed that captured it completely — since you may suppose I am saying absolute crap, however there’s all the time some sense in it,” Kekere-Ekun mentioned.
In 2017, he was invited to make a few skits for RED TV, a Lagos-based life-style channel. The corporate preferred his content material a lot that they supplied him his personal TV present, “Inspector Ok.”
In only a few years, he went from the set of “Inspector Ok” to that includes in a number of Nigerian movies together with “Namaste Wahala,” “Three Thieves,” and “The Royal Hibiscus Resort.”
Even with that success, Kekere-Ekun says he’s always working to broaden his model.
“I’m not afraid to strive new issues,” he mentioned. “I attempted performing and I’m having fun with it now … within the subsequent 5 years, I need to create much more content material that I’ve written and produced.”
Ope “SwitOpe” Keshinro
You will most definitely catch Ope Keshinro within the studio, anchoring her life-style radio present, however in 2020, initially of the Covid-19 pandemic, the pressured interval of lockdown in Nigeria pushed the radio presenter to strive one thing new.
“There was a video trending on Twitter on the time. It was in Yoruba [a West African dialect]. After which I noticed folks making their very own variations of the video. I assumed to myself ‘that is simple.’ I downloaded TikTok, picked up the audio, acted it out, and posted it,” she defined.
After a few hours, Keshinro realized her model of the video had gained traction, with a lot of her followers resharing and posting it.
Like Kekere-Ekun, manufacturers pay her to promote their merchandise by her TikTok movies. However being a content material creator is just not with out difficulties. “Essentially the most difficult half can be consistency … I all the time fear about folks becoming bored. I’m always pondering of what to do to maintain my content material recent,” she mentioned.
Regardless of her issues, the comedian says the constructive feedback on her social media pages are encouraging.
“Individuals inspire me, to be sincere. I’ve folks posting in my feedback and I’ve not come throughout damaging feedback,” she mentioned. “Generally once I do not put up movies, I’ve folks reminding me that I ought to put up as a result of they love my movies.”
Within the subsequent couple of years, Keshinro says she has goals of creating it in Nigeria’s film business: “I need to be essentially the most sought-after actress, a radio presenter and content material creator, multi functional.”
Tobi “Oli Ekun” Olubiyi
Rising up, Tobi Olubiyi needed to be many issues: a drummer, a lawyer, a scientist.
He finally ended up finding out grownup schooling as an alternative.
Whereas on the College of Ibadan, in southwest Nigeria, Olubiyi experimented with music and dance. However it was a tongue tornado on social media that launched him to the world of content material creation.
“A pal of mine, she put out a tweet, this tongue tornado: ‘How have you learnt her eyes are hazel?’ She mentioned we must always file a five-second video of us saying that,” he defined.
Olubiyi responded with a skit within the Yoruba language (spoken in west Africa), utilizing the phrase as a place to begin. The video had greater than 1,000 shares, with feedback from folks asking him to make related movies.
From there, his hottest skit character “Agba” was born — a Yoruba man who is legendary for bragging about having a number of girlfriends.
“Agba is a socialite, he’s a wealthy and prosperous individual … once I began creating content material, I used to be targeted on Agba. However now I’ve a number of characters that I play in my skits,” Olubiyi informed CNN.
In keeping with Olubiyi, considered one of his methods for getting shares on social media is creating movies that point out or make enjoyable of a few of Nigeria’s largest celebrities. By doing this, the celebrities — often musicians, together with Simi and Adekunle Gold, and Mayorkun — share his content material for his or her viewers to see.
Olubiyi can also be capitalizing on his movies by working with manufacturers. He says his huge breakthrough got here in 2020 when he was approached by Guinness Nigeria to develop into considered one of its model ambassadors.
At present, the comedian says making folks snicker is greater than only a interest.
“What I actually love about my movies is the truth that folks have reached out to me. They’ve mentioned issues like … ‘I noticed your video and it simply made me comfortable.’ That is fulfilling to me,” he mentioned. “I derive achievement from making different folks snicker and smile and taking them out of robust instances.”
