[INTERVIEW:] MAKINDE AZEEZ C.E.O NAIJALOADED : HOW BLOGGING DELAYED MY EDUCATION

Makinde Azeez may appear as your regular guy, but the 27-year-old Physics and Electronic graduate of Osun State University is the founder of one of Nigeria’s biggest music download websites, naijaloaded.com. Fresh out of the university, he speaks with OVWE MEDEME on his plans to reinvent the platform, challenges he has had to deal with and a whole lot of other issues.
HOW did Naijaloaded come to be?
I actually created it seven years ago, October 1, 2009 to be precise. It was on Independence Day and it was a public holiday. I was fresh out of secondary school then. I am good internet user and I was actually undergoing some training in web design.
And then, I did a check and I discovered that most bloggers have no knowledge about web designing. What they do is, they outsource their design and programming jobs to outsiders and those ones build based on their own understanding. But as one who has the knowledge, I know what is lacking in different platforms in Nigeria. So I built a website to address those challenges. That was how we started.
At what point did you realise it was something big?
With most blogs, users had to search a lot. We do most of the hardwork, then get most of the information we think Nigerians want to know. There was an issue with UNILAG admission in 2009. They already announced the date of their exams. It was on all Nigerian blogs but it was very hard for users to get the information.
Sowhat we did was to create a page for exam information. That was how we were able to grow based on what we think our users want. Music in Nigeria is a very lucrative business, but then there was no platform offering very flexible music downloads. What we did was that people wanted to comment. They wanted to talk about new releases even after downloading. As at then, there was no site giving them that platform. So we created a comment box for each post. That was how Naijaloaded grew from being just a normal information website to a full blown music website. Now, we are a niche-less blog. We do music, football, and majorly anything. We are not just a music website, but as it is, we don’t think there is a music website that can compete with us.