Teslim Opemipo Omipidan of OldNaija is our #BellaNaijaMCM this Week!

In the intro for the track “Another Story,” off Burna Boy‘s “African Giant Album,” it was mentioned that Britain paid £865,000 to Royal Niger Company to buy the latter’s territory which was to become known as Nigeria.

This came as news to most people in Nigeria and it got a lot of people asking questions and researching what actually transpired. That’s one evidence of the lack of knowledge of history among young people in Nigeria.

A lot of millennials and Gen Z in Nigeria have very little or no knowledge of their country: how it came to be; where it’s coming from; what happened along the way; and how it got to where it is today.

In 2007, Nigeria’s federal government removed History from the secondary school core curriculum, relegating it to an elective subject. Even when it was still part of the curriculum, a lot of the important events from Nigeria’s history were not included in the lesson outlines.

#BellaNaijaMCM this week Teslim Opemipo Omipidan is changing this narrative in his own little way.

The poet and journalist, founded OldNaija.com in 2014, a website dedicated to documenting Nigeria’s history and culture.

OldNaija.com goes beyond the lines to unearth historical events in Nigeria and document Nigerian traditions.

Teslim is a graduate of Mass Communication from Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, Ondo State and has won numerous poetry awards.

In 2018, he was named in Avance Media‘s “100 Most Influential Young Nigerians” list.

We celebrate Teslim for preserving Nigeria’s culture through documentation, and we’re rooting for him.