Temitayo Olatunde is a graduate of English and International Studies at the Osun State University, and the founder of the award-winning campus blog, OlofofoUniosun. In this interview with Kingsley Alumona, he speaks about his passion for journalism, why he founded the blog and the reading culture among Nigerian students. Excerpts:
Briefly tell us about your passion for the arts and journalism.
Right from childhood, I’ve always admired newscasters and reporters. Since then, I’ve been nurturing the ambition of venturing into journalism, which I started during my undergraduate years.
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You founded the OlofofoUniosun blog as an undergraduate in 2017. Why did you found it? And what was it like for you when you founded it?
UNIOSUN operates a multi-campus system, and I discovered that each of the six campuses was unaware of what was happening in other campuses. In order to bridge the information and communication gaps among the six campuses, I started OlofofoUniosun which is now the largest media platform in the institution. It was not easy when I first started, especially getting information from the six campuses. Also, the financial requirement to maintain the website was challenging. You know the linguistic implication of my appellation. So anywhere I went in the campus, staff and students called me ‘Olofofo’, it took me a while to get used to the name.
How did the blog help to link the different campuses of the university?
If anyone wants to know what’s happening in the whole six campuses, the best platform you would be advised to visit is OlofofoUniosun. Right now we’ve over 40,000 regular site visitors. Shortly after we started operation in 2017, the Vice Chancellor, Professor Labode Popoola commended us and since then, we’ve been serving as information link among the management, staff, students, alumni and parents. What makes us unique is timeliness and freshness of our updates. We’ve many national blogs that coin out news from our platform so as to inform the entire populace.
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It has been two years since you graduated from Uniosun. How do you still update, manage and sustain the blog and its contents?
Sincerely, my blog attained greater recognition and wider reach after I graduated. Just this year, we were awarded Best Campus Media in Nigeria among other awards. Each year, we recruit students across the six campuses who are interested to be our members. Last year, we recorded over 180 applications. With our reasonable number of reporters across the six campuses, we have been able to keep updating the students and also to sustain our contents.
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How does the blog foster knowledge and innovation among the students and staff? And do you have any plan of making the blog a national campus blog?
Information is knowledge and access to information that concerns oneself is a means to acquire knowledge about a particular subject. Our readers access first-hand information and get informed about what they are curious about. Our article category is also a stream of knowledge where our readers drink from. We also post scholarship and job opportunities to assist the students.
OlofofoUniosun is, in fact, an international campus blog because UNIOSUN is an international university. I only plan to explore other schools’ contents but on a separate blog with the name ‘Olofofo’.
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As a creative writer, how would you rate the reading culture of Nigerian students?
Digitalised reading has made it difficult to rate the reading culture of students, as there is little or no accurate database of students accessing all e-libraries, but I know that the reading culture of Nigerian students is not that bad. I will only encourage us to improve our reading culture because that’s a good way to learn. Also the government should increase job opportunities that will encourage students to read more.
What is your take on the Federal Government’s ban on Twitter? And in what ways do you think the media could help to strengthen Nigeria’s democracy and development?
The ban on Twitter has successfully increased the unemployment and poverty rate in the country. Influencers, employers, job seekers, entrepreneurs, among others benefit from Twitter. Many people are now hungry and broke because the government has banned their source of income. I got my first job after I graduated on Twitter. If Twitter was banned at that time, I wouldn’t have secured the job. Just imagine the number of unemployed graduates who won’t have access to job opportunities due to the ban.
FG should reconsider and lift the ban. This is not a time to flaunt supremacy of power in this century. Media is a vital tool in filling the gaps in democracy. Objective report will aid Nigeria’s democracy.
Briefly tell us about your engagements with YALI and ANA.
I am currently the Speaker Bureau Chair of Young African Leadership Initiative, RLC, Nigeria Alumni, a USA founded leadership Initiative under the administration of Barrack Obama. Since 2019, I’ve been leading over 3000 young leaders under the initiative. This year, I became the State Coordinator for USA Consulate YALI Clean Up Campaign Project in Nigeria where we advocate for cleaner cities. All we do in YALI is to make changes because we’re change makers. I’m the immediate past Auditor of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Osun State chapter.
What other project(s) are you currently working on? And where do you see yourself five years from now?
Currently, I’m working on a project entitled ‘Education For All’. Last year, over 1000 writing materials were distributed to pupils in Ibadan as part of my passion to keep advocating for the UN SDG 4 (Quality Education).
In the next five years, I see myself ranked as one of the top change makers in the world.
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