Biography
Nairaland Founder ‘Seun Osewa’: Biography, Education, Career, Marriage, Net Worth, Achievements and Controversy
By Balogun Kamilu Lekan
Biography
Oluwaseun Temitope Osewa, famously known as Seun Osewa, is an entrepreneur, programmer and the founder of Africa’s largest online forum, Nairaland.
Seun was born in Ogun State on the 17th of July, 1982.
Seun was also featured in Forbes 30 Under 30: Africa’s Best Young Entrepreneurs list in 2013
According to Alexa ranking, Nairaland has been the most visited Nigerian and African since 2015
Education
Seun reportedly attended the University Of Ile Ife to study electrical engineering in 1998 but later dropped out to focus on entrepreneurship.
Career
Seun ventured into web-hosting in 2003 but failed severally. His tenacity and consistency prompted him to try opting for python programming.
Finance became an obstacle when he couldn’t afford to pay for the hosting package, which cost about $15 monthly. Fortunately, a family friend offered to pay.
Seun started by creating three forums in November 2003 – A platform for higher institution students, one for IT discussions, and another for the emerging GSM industry; the Mobile Nigeria Forum at MobileNigeria.com.
The Mobile Nigeria Forum was relaunched in 2005 with the assistance of some mobile enthusiasts who helped include the link to the forum in their mailing list. The site grew to about 300 subscribers in a short period.
Ambitious Seun, still unsatisfied with the output, which is more telecommunication content-focused, decided to create a more accommodating forum that will cover additional sub forums like jokes, politics, and business, amongst others. This gave birth to Nairaland, which is all-encompassing.
At that time, most sites in Nigeria were operated by Nigerians abroad, especially in the UK and the United States. This made their content less Nigerian-focused but more focused on Nigerian living abroad.
With the birth of Nairaland, indigenous contents begin to multiply, and the subscribers start to swell.
Nairaland, with its contents at that period, had little competition and leveraged that to spread over the market like wildfire.
As Nairaland began progressing rapidly, spammers started gaining access to its various forums. Seun was able to curb this by selecting some active subscribers to become moderators to bring down spammers and regulate content on the forums.
Contents are seived by moderators, and the ones that are front-page worthy find their way there.
Nairaland is Nigeria’s search engine. It is also a place to verify genuine job interviews. Fake job posts have been uncovered with the use of the site.
It is also where job seekers get opportunities and real-time interaction with employers.
Additionally, Nairaland has also helped in tracking down fraudsters. Obiwanne, the famous Forbes list billionaire, was uncovered as a fraudster by the FBI from information from Nairaland.
By 2013, Forbes listed Seun among the best African successful entrepreneurs under 30.
Marriage
Seun Osewa has kept information about his wife and kids away from the public.
Net worth
Nairaland reportedly generates around 5-6 million naira monthly from revenues gotten from adverts and traffic on the website.
His net worth is also reportedly valued at about $5 million. However, NewsWireNgr cannot independently verify this at the moment.
Achievements
Seun was featured in the Forbes list of best African successful entrepreneurs under 30 in 2013.
He is also described as one of Nigeria’s most successful young entrepreneurs.
Seun has also been nominated for Nigeria’s 100 Best Award.
He had also been named one of the most innovative Nigerians in technology by YNaija.
T.I.N Magazine also mentioned Seun as one of the top ten most influential Nigerian online entrepreneurs in 2015.
Seun is a proud recipient of the lifetime achievement award in the Nigerian Tech Space.
Controversy
Earlier in 2022, a real estate mogul and billionaire, Stephen Akintayo, offered to buy Nairaland for a tag price of a 150million naira. This proposal faced backlashes from Nigerians who felt the site was worth more than the tag price.
In September 2022, Seun Osewa was caught up in a controversy when he delved into politics by blaming the Igbos and descendants of Kaduna Nzeugo for killing Tafawa Balewa and Ahmadu Bello.
He expressed this in a tweet that was later deleted.
In response, a Twitter user Ismaila Yusuf berated Seun for blaming the Igbos for something that happened 50 years ago.
In another tweet, Seun hit David Hundeyin, a famous Nigerian investigative journalist asking him to investigate the N250m/N255m cash found on Peter Obi’s aides in 2009.
David, without hesitation, gave his response to the tweet in a quoted tweet.
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Disclaimer
The information in this article was curated from online sources. NewsWireNGR or its editorial team cannot independently verify all details.
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