People who know me well know this about me: I will defend Nigeria with the same energy others reserve for their favourite football club.
One of the few things in life you have zero control over is the country of your birth. So when people casually declare that “Nigeria has made no progress,” I usually smile. The last 25 years tell a different story — and the loudest chapter of that story is written in Y’ello.
Before GSM, life in Nigeria moved at the speed of the landline and the public phone booth. Then, in 2001, under President Olusegun Obasanjo, the telecommunications sector was deregulated. In August that same year, MTN Nigeria switched on its network. What followed was not just a telecom revolution. It was a cultural one.
From the beginning, MTN did something unusual: it put young people at the centre of its story and plugged into the Youth Culture. Project Fame. MTN Music. Pulse Campus Invasion. MUSON Music Scholars. Youth Leadership Series. Later, MTN Champs, Next Afrobeats Star, Y’ellotide and Live It 100. These were not just campaigns. They were stages, microphones, and doors that many of us walked through.
The brand established itself as a Youthcentric one. And the Youth Culture was at the core of it’s DNA.
In 2007, when I launched ACADA Magazine, MTN was one of the first major youth brands willing to take a chance on us. Their young, hungry team — Kelvin Orifa, Osaze Ebueku, the late Dola Bamgoye, Funmi Olaogun, Joseph Ogbuka, John Akharume, Benjamin Elum and others — treated us like partners rather than a small media house begging for ads. We shared the same restless energy. We were both young brands trying to prove something.
That relationship deepened quickly.
In 2010, when MTN Project Fame West Africa launched, we were just barely 3 years old and MTN gave us the opportunity to be affiliated with them by covering the show and producing Exclusive Weekly Special Editions. Here is the story:
I walked into their office with a last-minute proposal for a weekly special edition for the show. Media plans were already locked. Still, they pointed me to Capital Media, the agency handling their media buying then. Against the odds, we closed the deal. It is the first time I am saying this publicly: those early years were never the most lucrative for the magazine. But having MTN’s name next to ours was pure brand currency. It told the market we belonged.
Many young people don’t know that it’s not always all about the money but the BRAND AFFILIATION.
We developed a huge relationship with the brand that we were almost ‘labelled’ an MTN brand, LOOL!!!
Later came the BlackBerry Fever at Tribeca Nightclub on Victoria Island — one of the biggest Raves and wildest nights Lagos had seen — as we helped amplify the Buy One Get One Free (BOGOF) Blackberry phone promo. They later sponsored our Campus Freshers Rave. Then the Pulse Campus Invasion years, when the Y’ello experience rolled through universities: dance battles, games, movie nights, and student entrepreneurs finally getting a platform to show their work.
What stayed with me most was never the contracts. It was the feeling. The people at MTN made us feel like family. It was never just client and supplier. It was a shared belief that young Nigerians and the businesses they were building deserved a proper shot.
So here’s to MTN Nigeria at 25.
Thank you for the stages, the belief, and the Y’ello thread that ran through so many of our early dreams.
Here’s to another 25 years of impact.
Abiodun Caston-Dada
Publisher, ACADA Magazine
