The Soft Issue
Cover
August 2017
OMOLADE OLORUNDARE
By: Notiki Bello
The caller is unidentified. Omolade Abimbola Olorundare. 400L. Mass Comm. 13 / 52HN0 ××. The voice at the other end is shrill. Every word he belches into the phone is sinister. He knows all about her already. She is worried and immediately slinks out of her Trunil hostel. All her mobile devices turned off.
Things have not always been this way for the young blogger. In 2013 she was class representative of her level. She quickly became known among her mates for her unrestrained tendencies to burst into tears anytime soon.
By 2014 / 2015 her venture into politics had begun to harden her. She gradually became hard to terrify: hard to intimidate. Olorundare contested for the post of vice president of the association of Mass Communication Students( AMCOS) and won.
In spite of these drastic moves, she was lost among the hordes. Her 4-point GPA did not set her apart from the 35,000 + students on campus. Now, the young lady has distinguished herself, her name running on nearly everyone ' s lips. It is not politics that put her name in people’ s mouth, but her mobile phone and internet connection. She is always online, scouring the web, and waiting to cast headlines that would hold you down.
During her internship with the Delta State University Radio Station in 2015 she began to develop a keen interest in blogging. Her interest did not quite kick off instantly. It started with an obsession for social media, first Facebook, then Twitter and Instagram. She created her first blog, a food blog, much later. She had co-run the blog alongside her friend. She would, after a year, found that her effort was not yielding the result she had desired. When she speaks about her food blog she does not have restraints. Oftentimes her sentences drag and melt into one another, coalescing into one long sentence.
" I got tired of food blogging because people rarely visit and most guys will actually tell me that Lade we can ' t visit your blog, it ' s just meant for females and I said OK. I still continued, but at least I stopped for a year."
One year had past and she hadn ' t blogged at all. All of the time she was serenading listeners of the UNILORIN radio with her robust feminine voice. Then she secured a placement at the government house, Kwara State. She was working with the governor ' s media team when another opportunity to blog presented itself again.
One thing is certain about the young blogger: she knows when to give up and when to start a new fight. She is gifted with a keen sense of discernment. This attribute would later prove to be extremely valuable for her.
It was a fine day at the government office in Ilorin. Olorundare sat along with other
colleagues. They were to have one of their daily meetings. Their boss had mentioned his 29 the LENS