As a young school leaver, Damilola Olatunde’s favourite past time was posting funny pictures and status updates on Facebook. All that ended in 2013 after Instagram released an update, allowing users upload videos.

Damilola switched to making Instagram comedy skits right away. With every video, he got better and soon learned to edit them all by himself.

Today, the Florida Memorial University MBA holder, who is popularly known as Aphricanape, is referred to as the new era king of comedy.

With over 436,000 followers, Aphricanape occupies a top position on the list of Nigeria’s biggest Instagram comedians.

“People enjoyed my skits right from the start. As expected, there were some haters and naysayers, but the love I received outweighed the hate, so I kept pushing,” he said recently.

“The ultimate goal is to grow beyond the skits and get into movies in both Nollywood and Hollywood.”

Not only is comedy a full-time job for him, it has earned him stand-up comedy gigs in the US, Canada, London, and Nigeria.

Welcome to bankable world of Nigerian Instagram comedians, many of whom have come from “nothing” to become online sensations.

Not only that, they are sort by brands and raking in lots of money in multimillion naira endorsements while giving analogue comedians a run for their money. But beware. Follow them at your own risk because they can leave you in stitches.

Lately, Instagram has proven to be the easiest and best platform for enterprising Nigerian youth to showcase their creative skills.

Little wonder that a crop of young Nigerian comedians are rapidly taking over the Nigerian comedy space with their teeming Instagram followers. So popular are some of them that multinational brands are taking advantage of their clout and fan base.

Armed with just an Internet enabled phone/tablet, camera, costume, make-up and amazing parody skills, these young men and women are smiling to the bank.

No longer a joking matter!

Next time you are tempted to say, “its just Instagram”, you might want to have a rethink. An average Aphricanape’s Instagram skit attracts 100,000 views, about 1,200 comments, an average of 3000


http://medianet.info/2017/06/17/how-a-nigerian-went-from-nothing-to-becoming-instagram-star/