This year was fun. Let's not do it again.

Forward this email. [Enjoy and Share!]( Enjoy and Share! [View Online]( [Enjoy and Share!](#) [article image](#) [article image](#) At the start of 2020, I had big plans for the year. I had made a list of all the restaurants I wanted to try, all the countries I wanted to explore, the parties I wanted to attend. I’m sure you had similar plans. At Zikoko, we had a lot of shows, projects and events lined up. We even launched some, like “[A Week In The Life](”, a weekly series about what it’s like to work and hustle in Nigeria, led by resident baby boy, Hassan Yahaya Taiwo and “[Blind Date](”, a show where we paired up young Nigerians to go on all-expense paid blind dates and tell us about their experience, led by Daniel. Then Corona happened and it felt like the world was at a standstill, or worse, we were living in a horror movie. With new or infrequently used terms like “social distancing”, “lockdown” “self-isolation” and “quarantine”, came a new reality: working from home. For the Zikoko team, this was relatively new for us. While in the past we had remote days, we had never all at once worked from home like this. It was hard to go from sharing a meal with Hassan and Fu’ad during lunch break or snickering at Tomiwa’s old-school music to talking to faces on a computer during editorial meetings. But we managed. Shout out to all our ogas for making it easy to settle into this reality. During the lockdown (and widespread anxiety that a lot of us had), the team tried to come up with ways to keep you interested in the work that we do. First, we came up with [Corona Facts.africa](, which consists of resources to understand Covid and the infection rate across Africa. We did this as a quick way to fight misinformation. Then we launched “[Happy Thoughts](”, where we curated all of the funniest Zikoko articles ever to give you a place to run to when the news got overwhelming. The lockdown presented a different and often harsh reality for a lot of people around Nigeria. We wanted to explore how people living alone or with their partners found this new reality, so we launched “[Lockdown Diary](”. This series was documented by Kunle. The brilliant video team launched three new shows (shout out to Joy, Jenrola, Shola, Damilola, Osita and Femi). - [Hacked](: Hilarious fictional text messages. - [The Couch](: Anonymous voice notes where you can rant about a range of things from coping with covid to talking about sex - [Isolation Diary](: Where Astor talked to you about what isolating was like for him. The team also came up with a great way to allow you film Nigerians Talk from your homes! Talk about getting involved and reducing the risk of spreading Covid. FYI, season 4 of [Nigerians Talk](, released during the thick of Covid, has been one of the best seasons till date. Thanks to you for contributing, watching, sharing. Don’t you understand how awesome you are? Then the [Zikoko Quiz]( team took quizzes to the next level. A little secret: when Covid started, people were not reading as much, neither were they taking quizzes as much. So the team went to the drawing board and began serious experimentation. It was that phase that gave birth to this quiz about [African countries and their capital](. That quiz has been taken almost 600,000 times by you and people from all over the world. Speaking of experiments, you showed us how much you care for the different things we do when you paid real attention to our big stories. From Toheeb’s story about [grade sorting in Nigeria]( to Daniel’s story about the [sex abuse of young boys](. You know what both stories have in common? They’re both very underreported. And you know we are always wearing our thinking caps, so we looked at our editorial flagships and categories and said, what is it that you need and probably don’t know that you need? It was then we came up with our Men’s Category, “[Man Dem](” (by God, it was so hard to decide on a name) which is just basically men for men by men. Under this category, we launched “[Man Like](” which asks one vital question of men from different backgrounds: What does it mean to be a man? This happened in August. In October, [End SARS]( took the nation by storm. How can we call ourselves an amplifier of the voice of the Nigerian youth if we don’t amplify and document the movement? From creating a widget that helped you find protest locations near you to educating the public about the protest and SARS and then humanising the victims and survivors of the brutality of SARS. This quickly led us to launch [Zikoko’s Citizen](, the category that explains how the government’s policies mess us all up and how we can fix the problems. Shout out to Ruth, Fu’ad and Doyin. Then came in quick succession “[Love Life](”, a weekly series about love, relationships, situationships and entanglements - how they start, how they end or where they're going and then “[Zikoko Memes](”, the only place on the internet where you can find, download, upload African memes. We could only do all of these because of you. Not only do you read, watch and share our content, you constantly hype us and you support us. We launched our [donation widget]( in November and since then, you’ve shown us that you value the work that we do. It is thanks to you that: - We had over 14 million views on the website - 14,435,779 - Our quizzes were taken over 5 million times - 5,881,903 - And we had over 7.5M views on our articles - 7,503,207 We really couldn’t have pulled any of this without you. So, this is a heartfelt thank you. Thank you for sticking with us. Let’s do this again in 2021 — oh no, not the Covid and isolation. God, NO. P.S Share this newsletter with two friends to show them what they are missing. [Editor Headshot] Ope Editor-at-Large. At the start of 2020, I had big plans for the year. I had made a list of all the restaurants I wanted to try, all the countries I wanted to explore, the parties I wanted to attend. I’m sure you had similar plans. At Zikoko, we had a lot of shows, projects and events lined up. We even launched some, like “[A Week In The Life](”, a weekly series about what it’s like to work and hustle in Nigeria, led by resident baby boy, Hassan Yahaya Taiwo and “[Blind Date](”, a show where we paired up young Nigerians to go on all-expense paid blind dates and tell us about their experience, led by Daniel. Then Corona happened and it felt like the world was at a standstill, or worse, we were living in a horror movie. With new or infrequently used terms like “social distancing”, “lockdown” “self-isolation” and “quarantine”, came a new reality: working from home. For the Zikoko team, this was relatively new for us. While in the past we had remote days, we had never all at once worked from home like this. It was hard to go from sharing a meal with Hassan and Fu’ad during lunch break or snickering at Tomiwa’s old-school music to talking to faces on a computer during editorial meetings. But we managed. Shout out to all our ogas for making it easy to settle into this reality. During the lockdown (and widespread anxiety that a lot of us had), the team tried to come up with ways to keep you interested in the work that we do. First, we came up with [Corona Facts.africa](, which consists of resources to understand Covid and the infection rate across Africa. We did this as a quick way to fight misinformation. Then we launched “[Happy Thoughts](”, where we curated all of the funniest Zikoko articles ever to give you a place to run to when the news got overwhelming. The lockdown presented a different and often harsh reality for a lot of people around Nigeria. We wanted to explore how people living alone or with their partners found this new reality, so we launched “[Lockdown Diary](”. This series was documented by Kunle. The brilliant video team launched three new shows (shout out to Joy, Jenrola, Shola, Damilola, Osita and Femi). - [Hacked](: Hilarious fictional text messages. - [The Couch](: Anonymous voice notes where you can rant about a range of things from coping with covid to talking about sex - [Isolation Diary](: Where Astor talked to you about what isolating was like for him. The team also came up with a great way to allow you film Nigerians Talk from your homes! Talk about getting involved and reducing the risk of spreading Covid. FYI, season 4 of [Nigerians Talk](, released during the thick of Covid, has been one of the best seasons till date. Thanks to you for contributing, watching, sharing. Don’t you understand how awesome you are? Then the [Zikoko Quiz]( team took quizzes to the next level. A little secret: when Covid started, people were not reading as much, neither were they taking quizzes as much. So the team went to the drawing board and began serious experimentation. It was that phase that gave birth to this quiz about [African countries and their capital](. That quiz has been taken almost 600,000 times by you and people from all over the world. Speaking of experiments, you showed us how much you care for the different things we do when you paid real attention to our big stories. From Toheeb’s story about [grade sorting in Nigeria]( to Daniel’s story about the [sex abuse of young boys](. You know what both stories have in common? They’re both very underreported. And you know we are always wearing our thinking caps, so we looked at our editorial flagships and categories and said, what is it that you need and probably don’t know that you need? It was then we came up with our Men’s Category, “[Man Dem](” (by God, it was so hard to decide on a name) which is just basically men for men by men. Under this category, we launched “[Man Like](” which asks one vital question of men from different backgrounds: What does it mean to be a man? This happened in August. In October, [End SARS]( took the nation by storm. How can we call ourselves an amplifier of the voice of the Nigerian youth if we don’t amplify and document the movement? From creating a widget that helped you find protest locations near you to educating the public about the protest and SARS and then humanising the victims and survivors of the brutality of SARS. This quickly led us to launch [Zikoko’s Citizen](, the category that explains how the government’s policies mess us all up and how we can fix the problems. Shout out to Ruth, Fu’ad and Doyin. Then came in quick succession “[Love Life](”, a weekly series about love, relationships, situationships and entanglements - how they start, how they end or where they're going and then “[Zikoko Memes](”, the only place on the internet where you can find, download, upload African memes. We could only do all of these because of you. Not only do you read, watch and share our content, you constantly hype us and you support us. We launched our [donation widget]( in November and since then, you’ve shown us that you value the work that we do. It is thanks to you that: - We had over 14 million views on the website - 14,435,779 - Our quizzes were taken over 5 million times - 5,881,903 - And we had over 7.5M views on our articles - 7,503,207 We really couldn’t have pulled any of this without you. So, this is a heartfelt thank you. Thank you for sticking with us. Let’s do this again in 2021 — oh no, not the Covid and isolation. God, NO. P.S Share this newsletter with two friends to show them what they are missing. [Editor Headshot] Ope Editor-at-Large --------------------------------------------------------------- If you enjoyed this newsletter tell someone about it, forward it to them. Stay safe. Stay awesome! If you enjoyed this newsletter tell someone about it, forward it to them. Stay safe. Stay awesome! [about]( [Advertise]( [Subscribe]( [READ MORE STORIES]( [ABOUT]( [Advertise]( [GOT THIS FROM A FRIEND? SUBSCRIBE!]( [FB]( [Twitter]( [IG]( [IG]( You are receiving this email because you subscribed to receive marketing communications from Big Cabal Media under the terms of our [Privacy Policy](. [Click here to unsubscribe]( Zikoko is a Big Cabal Media brand. Copyright © 2020