Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is coming home!

The highly anticipated Homecoming Tour celebrates her first novel in 12 years, Dream Count.

Critically acclaimed for its emotional depth and incisive social commentary, Dream Count continues to resonate globally.

The tour will feature exclusive ticketed book events in Lagos and Abuja, where audiences can enjoy an evening of poetry, music and readings by the author.

In Enugu, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will be a distinguished guest at the inaugural Things Fall Apart Festival, hosted by the Centre for Memories.

Join us to welcome her home.

Tickets for Lagos and Abuja events available here: https://tix.africa/discover/bo/dccnatour

This young lady in the first photo, Tsegba Lucy, lost her mother and four sisters in the tragic attack that happened yesterday in Benue State.

Imagine losing your entire family in one day...
If she had been home, she probably wouldn’t have made it out alive either.

This is beyond heartbreaking
How do you even begin to comfort someone going through this kind of pain?

This is the greatest comeback story in history:

At 12, This Man witnessed his father’s murder.

Later Lost his life savings on 3 failed startups.

Bet everything on one last idea.

Today, his company is worth $3 billion.

This is the story of Tope Awotona, the Nigerian-born tech. entrepreneur, founder of Calendly

and the 3 lessons his journey teaches us about failure, resilience, and success:

At just 12 years old, young Tope witnessed his father’s murder during a carjacking in Lagos.

That moment shattered his world.

But little did he know, this tragedy would ignite a fire within him,
a drive to build something extraordinary.

After his father’s death, Tope moved to America as a teenager.

He studied computer science at the University of Georgia but found himself drawn to sales roles.

Yet, something was missing.

He wanted to create something that mattered.

So, he took the leap into entrepreneurship.

His first venture? An e-commerce site selling projectors.

It failed

His second startup? A garden tools business.

It failed too

His third attempt? A dating website.

That also crashed and burned

Each failure cost him time, money, and confidence.

But each one also taught him something invaluable:

His first failure exposed the importance of supply chain management.

His second failure showed him the value of operational efficiency.

His third failure taught him about market timing and the need for proper funding.

By 2013, Tope was out of money, out of ideas, and out of options.

But he wasn’t out of the fight.

He had one last idea, and he went all in.

Invested his entire life savings, $200,000, into a scheduling tool called Calendly .

Friends thought he was crazy.

Investors called the idea "boring" and "unscalable."

But Tope had discovered a universal pain point: the endless back-and-forth emails just to schedule a single meeting.

He knew this wasn’t just an annoyance, it was a productivity killer.

With no external funding, Tope hired Ukrainian contractors to build the first version of Calendly.

He kept it simple:

A clean interface.

Easy functionality.

One core problem solved perfectly.

And it worked.

Calendly spread like wildfire.

Freelancers loved its simplicity.
Sales teams appreciated its efficiency.
Recruiters shared it with their networks.

By 2020, Calendly was generating over $70 million in annual recurring revenue.

Then, COVID hit.

The world shifted to remote work, and virtual meetings became the norm.

Calendly became essential.

In 2021, investors who once dismissed Tope’s idea poured in $350 million.

Calendly’s valuation skyrocketed to $3 billion.

Today, Tope Awotona is worth over $1 Billion dollars become the few Nigerian-born Entrepreneurs who has crossed the billionaire line

The boy who witnessed tragedy in Lagos had built a tech empire.

But His journey revealed three profound truths about success to Us:

- Rejection is redirection

Every failed startup taught Tope something critical.
The lessons from those failures became the foundation for Calendly’s success.

- Solve real problems

Calendly didn’t chase trends, it solved a pain point Tope experienced firsthand.
The best ideas come from personal frustration.

- Constraints breed creativity

With no funding, Tope focused on simplicity.
That constraint became Calendly’s greatest strength.

Tope Awotona’s story is proof that success isn’t about avoiding failure it’s about learning from it.

So, the next time you face rejection, remember Tope Awotona’’s journey.

Your greatest comeback could be just one idea away.

#TechStories
#calendly
#tope

JUNE 12: The first picture is happening in Lagos where youths are having a Hunger protest.

The second picture is happening in Abia, Aba precisely where youths are having a 2 million man match in support of Gov Alex Otti good governance

The two events are happening simultaneously and on the same day.

Uzbekistan National Team Players Get Car Gifts For Qualifying For World Cup For The First Time Ever

- He reached the final at the age of 40. He scored his goal.
- He won the cup.
- He is the top scorer in the national team.
- He is the top scorer in all competitions at the club level.
- He is the top scorer in the world.
- He won his 36th cup tonight.
- He is ambitious and emotional as if it was his first cup.

GOAT. GOAT. GOAT.

Tolu Arokodare gets his first goal for Nigeria and the equalizer against Russia.⚽️

And yes, at 40 years old, this big man just pulled off a comeback against Germany in a UEFA Nations League semi-final. Portugal, led by Cristiano, beat Germany for the first time in 25 years. Eternal respect for Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro. ❣

Regina should steer clear of this drama.

Angela and Mercy go way back—about two decades, in fact. Regina was barely out of diapers when all this started, so it’s unlikely she can grasp the depth of whatever’s simmering between these two seasoned actresses.

Mercy’s career took flight in 2004 when eight of Nollywood’s top stars—names like Omotola, Genevieve, RMD, and Jim Iyke—were temporarily blacklisted for demanding higher pay. That one-year suspension gave rising talents like Mercy Johnson, Ini Edo, and Stephanie Okereke a golden opportunity to shine. Before that, they were mostly stuck playing side characters or friends of the lead.

Adding to Mercy’s luck, Genevieve didn’t return to acting until 2006 when she starred in *Girls Cot*. By that time, Mercy had already stolen the spotlight. She wasn’t just skilled—she had the figure and on-screen charm that fit the era’s favorite roles: queens, village belles, university girls, and the dangerous beauty with secrets.

However, with more fame came more friction. Her first public altercation was in 2010 with Patience Ozokwor. Witnesses claimed Patience criticized a costume and threw subtle shade, saying she wasn’t about to wear something “Mercy-style.” Mercy heard and went off.

The following year, she reportedly butted heads with Mike Ezuruonye. She’d arrived late to a shoot, and Mike called her out on it, reminding her of the humility she once had. That didn’t sit well with Mercy, who allegedly refused to rehearse lines with him afterward.

2011 was also the year she married Prince Odianosen Okojie, even though he was still legally married to someone else at the time. That marriage added more fuel to the bad-girl image that followed her.

Soon after, Mercy made headlines again for allegedly smashing a crew member’s phone. The story goes that the young woman had been recording a romantic scene, and Mercy suspected the footage was meant for gossip blogs as “proof” of infidelity.

(Back then, I was on Mercy’s side. Nigerian gossip bloggers were wild. They made life hell for stars like Tonto, Ini, and Genevieve.)

As Mercy began having kids, she slowly withdrew from the spotlight—but her old controversies kept resurfacing. In 2019, Sonia Ogiri spoke up about how Mercy had allegedly blocked her from landing acting roles. Sonia said she even had to beg Mercy for forgiveness. But by then, Mercy had rebranded and was loved by the public, so Sonia got dragged online for daring to speak out.

In 2020, Davido dropped a cryptic but cutting comment under Eniola Badmus’ congratulatory post for Mercy and her husband’s new baby. “Wicked people… congrats though,” he wrote. When asked about it, he added, “Nothing. Just evil set of people.” Neither Mercy nor her husband addressed the remarks, though he did later deny the baby news.

Then in 2021, Mercy’s daughter, Purity, was allegedly targeted by a teacher who confessed that her grudge was with Mercy, not the child. No one ever disclosed what sparked that resentment.

Now in 2025, Mercy is visibly slimmer, and fans are beginning to question if her weight loss is really by choice. On June 3rd, Angela Okorie went live on Instagram and claimed that Mercy is seriously ill. She urged her to seek forgiveness from those she’d wronged.

Today, Regina Daniels has jumped into the fray to defend Mercy, whom she calls her godmother. She’s dragging Angela left and right online. But Angela is unmoved—she maintains her advice stands and says Mercy needs to make peace with her past.

Honestly, Regina should sit this one out.

Angela may be controversial, but she’s been around long enough to know things Regina doesn’t. It would be wiser for Regina to focus on her own journey—especially with a baby on the way (yes, Ned said so in his anniversary post)—and let the veterans handle their unresolved issues.

This isn't her fight.

The whole situation is complicated and layered, which is why those who witnessed the beginning of it all are keeping quiet and watching from the sidelines.

“The $100 million we invested in Iroko TV was a mistake. If I had another opportunity, I would not do it again.”

Jason Njoku shares his terrible, brutal experience running Iroko TV.

Let's read him:

STREAMING IN NIGERIA. DID THE MARKET WIN?

Iroko’s first funding was in August 2011; our mandate was to build a large streaming business in Nigeria.

Tiger Global believed that one of the largest growth areas would be online entertainment, and like most content, the winners would be local content in large domestic markets.

They invested $200 million in Netflix back in 2010 and then invested in IVI in Russia, YY in China, Netmovies in Brazil, and us in Nigeria.

With super-expensive data bundles and inelegant payment options (I remember waiting for Interswitch to enable us to integrate), our market took a while to mature. In most opportunities, you can be too early or too late; only in hindsight can you gauge when the best time to strike would be. iROKOtv was very early when we launched in 2011, but we were fortunate that there was a ready-made international market in the diaspora who were willing to pay and able to overcome any technical hurdles (payment/bandwidth/devices) to enable us to at least generate a sizable income.

We actually waited until 2015 (four years post-launch), building the product, securing a sizable content library, and assembling a team to attempt to take on Nigeria and Africa. Between the revenues we generated and the venture capital we raised ($35 million) over the first ten years, we easily spent $100 million trying to win.

But we weren’t winning; we weren’t really losing either. We were just there, in full survival mode, operating in the toughest conditions possible. Streaming, even domestically, is a scale game.

Africa wasn’t immune to those costs. It’s incredibly expensive across marketing, content, delivery, and product platforms. Our largest, most serious competitors were Showmax, Netflix, Amazon, and Iflix. Collectively, they easily invested $1 billion or more from 2015 to 2023.

During that period, we often had tense board meetings about why iROKOtv wasn’t succeeding; it was challenging to feel that all my hard work and dedication were constantly reduced to “you’re not doing enough”.

We have been, and remain, the most aggressive in trying to distribute content across Nigeria—deploying hundreds of manned kiosks, teams of outbound contact centre agents, creating agency networks, adjusting our product to prioritise Android downloads, and pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing.

At one point, it dawned on me, and I finally shot back in a board meeting: if iROKOtv was losing, could they point to someone who was beating us? In the startup world, that’s usually the outcome of underperformance.

You are simply being out-executed by a better-capitalised or higher-performing startup. In this case, there simply wasn’t anything anyone could point to to establish that.

So my simple assertion was that the market was winning. In 2019, we went out to fundraise; for the first time, we used a bank, Stanbic IBTP, to support that.

We were looking for $10-20 million to keep pushing into and across Africa with our outbound, agency, and kiosk models.

I believed my tales of survival would inspire the (primarily) PE investors that we were going to be the eventual winners in a brutal, long-fought civil streaming war. Instead, they all largely concluded that perhaps there was no market there, that the unit economics were simply not viable at any reasonable scale.

What they were all interested in was the ROK content, TV channels, and distribution business. It was straightforward (fewer than 30 employees), had clear revenue recognition (billion-dollar paid TV platforms – DStv, Multichoice, SKY, etc., with 3-5 year contracts in non-local currencies), and was amassing a sizable IP library funded by the same paid TV platforms. Once we separated out ROK, it was clear where the value lay in Iroko. It represented 80% of revenues and 25% of costs. EBITA margins of 35-40% were achieved without even realising it.

The outcome of that fundraise was the $25 million partial exit (Iroko sold her shares; Mrs Njoku remains a significant shareholder in the studio) to Vivendi/Canal+.

We closed in July 2019.

Before the end of 2019, we had distributed $5 million as a special dividend and were primed to take on the world.

Then COVID-19 happened. Streaming temporarily boomed in the West (our North American business tripled in subscriber growth), while Nigeria closed borders and grappled with peculiar economic principles (devaluations, FX windows, etc.).

The local market in Nigeria simply collapsed. We saw it and stubbornly decided to keep investing and doubling down until we were all tapped out, having burnt through most of the post-exit capital. To save iROKOtv, we considered crowdfunding, an AIM LSE listing (you could raise $10-30 million easily back then) with relatively little revenue but a strong narrative.

In the end, we raised $1.1 million in convertible notes, then recapped the company a year later and paid it back.

In 2023, we finally accepted there was no market for paid premium services and exited Nigeria. We haven’t processed any Naira payments there in almost two years.

As I humbly survey the wreckage of the last 15 years of streaming in Nigeria and Africa, it’s clear our (then $2k GDP per capita) was too small to support even a $5/mo product. It’s clear this wasn’t even a question of capital.

Showmax alone continues to pour tens, if not hundreds, of millions to make it work. But the global giants tapped out last year; their costs (content and marketing) were clearly unsustainably high, and their product needed to be localised to make sense and actually work; it’s just not how platforms sustainably scale.

So I wasn’t surprised when either Amazon or Netflix rolled back their considerable investments in Nigeria. $5/mo is a luxury I doubt even 250k can reliably afford in Nigeria.

You can see the impact of what GOtv and DStv are suffering at the hands of the market. It’s okay that we tried and failed. It’s okay that we accept the limitations in the domestic market we find ourselves in. Did it need $1B+ to figure this out?

Absolutely not. I believe, with my newfound knowledge, that iROKOtv could have reached the same conclusions with $5-10 million versus the $100 million+ we ended up investing.

In hindsight, streaming wasn’t the winning model for Nollywood in Nigeria. Content, channels, and distribution were.

With the economics that business had in 2018, we could have shut down iROKOtv and her $5 million/year in losses and either listed it or just had a fantastically profitable business.

But I was a believer and walked away from millions of dollars in personal liquidity to put it all in to build streaming in Africa.

My lessons were expensive, and that’s why I am so consistent in telling founders not to over-raise.

I am not surprised by the story of Obi from Kobo360; I lobbied him pre-$30m raise not to raise too much capital or later on to seek a merger with his nearest competitor whilst they were engaged in a brutal price war.

The unit economics and payment cycles were brutal, and capital wasn’t going to dramatically change the market dynamics, and it appeared that no one was really going to win that market. It’s only with deep, lived, and expensive experience that I can glance at unit economics coldly and get a feel for whether, with the usual macro turbulence, a startup has a better chance at long-term success.

Nigeria is currently a massive drag on the entire operating business of Multichoice. Their most recent H1 reports indicate.

Reminder that this is the largest pay platform in Africa, which is currently being acquired in a $2.8B deal.

Daughter of Akwa Ibom governor, Umo Eno accuses him of using the late First Lady (her mom) for sacrifice, and she might be next.