Features
Olamide & Aisha Craig discuss creating an Online Dating Platform – SuruLereLove – for Nigerians Home & Abroad
Olamide and Aisha Craig are a UK based Nigerian couple who have created an online dating platform for Nigerians at home and abroad called SuruLereLove. Olamide is a medical doctor and pastor and is a BellaNaija contributor. Aisha is a banker and a health and wellness enthusiast and together they are passionate about building love and relationships.
In anticipation of the launch of SuruLereLove on November 30th, the couple are sharing with BellaNaija, what the platform is about and their plans for it.
“Sùúrù l èrè is a Yoruba phrase. Sùúrù means patience, èrè means reward and Surulere means “Patience is not without its rewards” or “Patience will yield its fruit”. It is from this ancient traditional wisdom that we have distilled the words of our brand. At SuruLerelove we truly believe that “you can’t rush something you want to last forever!” and we know that all good relationships take time and patience to develop. That is why we chose to use patience to encapsulate the ethos of our corporate identity,” they said.
On how the platform is different, the couple says that that “unlike other dating sites where sexual attraction and instant gratification are the most important criteria for choosing a mate, members of SuruLereLove fill out a detailed personality profile and a comprehensive list of preferred characteristics which is used to match them with the most suitable and eligible singles.”
The couple says the platform is not a Christian dating site and is open to everyone regardless of their religion, ethnicity or creed. “The principles of good practice one can expect from true Christians will continue to govern our platform,” they added.
What it takes to Join
It’s free. No cost whatsoever. Everyone who signs up is automatically assigned our complimentary welcome plan. We have set the duration at 6 months in the first instance, and users can request for this to be refreshed at the end of this period should they require. We have a few paid subscription packages, but will not be rolling these out until much later, at the end of the year 2018.
On Whether Nigeria is ready for Online Dating
Nigeria already has online dating. People have been finding love online via Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for years, (and MySpace and Hi5 before that). What SuruLereLove hopes to do is to eliminate the guess work. On social media, there are millions of users who are on these platforms for various reasons, they are online looking for business, news, entertainment etc. On our platform all the users have signed up because they are looking for exactly the same thing, Life long love! This way you know that your advances would be met with at least curiosity and not repulsion.
How SuruLereLove hopes to expand a user’s social circles
Surulerelove was created to introduce people and start relationships. Our primary market is the Nigerian community at home and in the diaspora and our goal is to foster “life long love”. We have chosen three broad strategies with which to execute this.
First is to introduce Nigerians in Nigeria to other Nigerians living in Nigeria. This will appeal to busy professionals who may find it hard to make time to date the traditional way, or members whose social circles are too small for desired mate selection, or who have very specific/niche dating pools (i.e Fitness, Star Wars fans, Single parents).
This member has exhausted potential mates from within their existing reach and is looking to expand this further afield. Next we hope to introduce Nigerians in the diaspora who are looking to marry from the home land to other eligible singles who live in Nigeria and abroad.
Launch Date & How to Signup
To sign up, users will create an account and fill out a user profile. Our sign up process is a bit more detailed than most conventional dating sites, but we feel that this was necessary to extract a fair amount of information and help our users eliminate the guess work that can often make online dating tedious and cumbersome.
The official launch date is Thursday 30th of November 2017 and the sign up link will be posted on BellaNaija as well as across all their social media platforms @SuruLereLove.
BellaNaija is a Media Partner for SuruLereLove.
