The Soft Issue
August 2017
Cover
warfront taking bullets to the chest without even
wincing. She was once summoned to the security
unit. But soon after that she was left off the hook.
Her defence: “I told them what I was practically
doing was just journalistic and not really journalism.
I am a social media person , anything goes on social
media, there was no way they could fault me. They
were like I was supposed to register according to
the constitution.”
"There was a day I went upstairs to greet a top
official in school and he was like ‘hope we are safe’. I
was like I‘ve not gotten anything from you guys. He
said it’s because ‘you’ve not put out anything out
there for us to respond to’."
It is almost as if she expected to be beleaguered
every time. Because it is the reality of the type of
work she has chosen. On the path she takes there
is harassment: anonymous phone calls; threats, and
every ominous sign one can possibly think of. But
her skin has too many layers for all this to hold her
back.
Blogging to her has now morphed from just a
hobby to an activity that yields rewards—this, she
agrees, suit her well. When she talks about how
blogging has impacted her life, her tone is smug
and at the same time piteous. It is as if she needed
a break from this thing that is taking much of her
time and leaving her exhausted half of the time.
“The thing is, usually I use my subscription for a
month before, but now I can barely go to Instagram,
I hardly reply my WhatsApp messages, except they
are business chats, I hardly reply them. Even twitter
and other social media platforms, I run out of them
immediately. I just go there to get news and log
out immediately, because I don't have any time to
waste for all that now. Usually, I was the chatting
type, but I now barely have time for that now.”
On a warm evening during the 2017 Harmattan
semester exams, Lade had gotten a call from one of
her numerous sources. The SU president had been
slapped. Her mouth widened. Who the hell slaps
the student union president on campus? She called
the president almost instantly after the last caller
got off.
Armed with scathing details, she posted the
incident on her blog. The story was a PR disaster
for the school. In a few hours it had caught fire,
spawning hot reactions from alumnus and people
of the webspace. What did she do wrong? She had
posted only a side of the story. This story would
later get Olorundare into what appeared to be
serious trouble.
Photo: Al-Faruq Akinwumi
Make-up: Jesuseun Kolawole
Stylist: Rachel Alabi
"I was in my cousin's house that faithful day, then
I heard that the VC had meeting with students
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