In 2007, I looked around and wondered why there was no
campus publication with a national presence, a newspaper that students across
campuses from Lagos to Lafia, Ekiti to Enugu, Lagos to Zamfara could call their
own - A newspaper that can aggregate everything about campuses and things
students love to read outside of campuses and present it in a classical tabloid
style at a price they could afford.
I decided to publish one but there was no money. I came up
with business plans and met a couple of ‘big people’ journalism gave me access
to. None could help with the take-off fund I needed to breathe life into the
project. I fasted, prayed and read all there was about business yet no one gave
me the capital.
Samuel Olatunji now
One midnight, I decided to start with my N30, 000 salary
from Daily Independent newspaper. It was the night my entire life turned
around. I employed two people the following day; one, on a salary of N10, 000
and the other, on a salary of N5, 000. We published and got adverts from
Governor Babatunde Fashola and Mr. Jimi Agbaje; who were contesting then. Mrs.
Quincy Ayodele, Mr. Dehinde Harrison of Ebony Casket and late Uncle Tunji of
MIC (may God bless his soul) all gave me adverts to support the cause. We
published the maiden edition and the paper sold out; all 5, 000 copies finished
in less than two weeks – I could see my dream taking shape.
Sun Newspaper invited me and offered me employment, and I
abandoned the dream that gave me my first million to concentrate on giving my
best to the paper. After five years at The Sun newspaper, the dream kept
nudging at my heart, I decided to go
back to resuscitate the dream. Now, we didn’t need to start looking for
capital; a publicity firm, Bigsam Media I founded while at ‘The Sun’ could
finance the project, yet other issues beyond money crept up. From name-change, registration, staffing,
juggling Bigsam Media’s jobs with structure to distribute a national paper and
battling with newspaper circulation agents came up. We eventually registered
the title iCampus Newspaper over a year ago and did a preview edition that
caught on like wild fire.
After a lot of falling and rising, today I am glad to
announce that iCampus Newspaper and its online version; www.icampusng.com has
become number one campus publication again. The paper version circulates across
23 states on different campuses and the website has become the number one
students’ news site in Nigeria. The dream is surely taking shape. The site is
getting more hits, the papers are selling faster than your regular paper on
newsstands and the beautiful thing about it is that students are selling it for
us while they also make money smiling to the bank. iCampus is making students
rich!
Another arm of the project that excites me is the new
appointments in the paper. We now have a new team running the project without
my day-to-day interference. We will make a public announcement on this next
week.
As we begin plans to start a youth TV programme that will
resonates with the youths, I want to say thank you for making our dream come
true, supporting the project and sending in constructive criticism. We are not
near where we plan to be but surely we are not where we used to be. Let’s toast
to the feat of being number one for now.
Samuel Olatunji
www.icampusng.com
Enquiries:
sam@icampusng.com
icampusng@gmail.com
Twitter: @icampusng
@samuelolatunji
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ iCampus Newspaper
Phone: 08172001912
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