Toun

Customer Experience Advocate | Lover of the Jollof Life | Omo Jesu

[Toun @TounSully]

Nigerian businesses!!!

It’s not by posting filtered pics on Instagram.

Pay close attention to the service you give. It’s absolutely ridiculous how so many of you lack BASIC customer service skills!

[Toun @TounSully]

Both. I don’t discriminate.

[Toun @TounSully]

👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

[Chude Jideonwo @Chude]

Without exception, all of the interviewers who have spoken to me this season have asked: ‘You seem to have done it all in this media space. What is next?’

Done it all???

I am just getting started.

Over the next few years from now, I am making a big bet on Africa; on African media and African storytellers. To build an army of African content creators and journalists telling African stories.

But I don’t want us to “tell African stories to the world”. I want us to tell African stories to Africans - across the continent, across class, across gender, across difference.

My experience with politics, governments and corporates across 26 countries on the continent over the past two decades have prepared me for this moment.

I want to, with my work, inspire and, with my hands, help equip an entire generation of African storytellers to represent a complex, nuanced picture of Africa that empowers Africans. And if the world comes for the ride, they are welcome to witness.

“I think where we have missed it is that we have focused on many other things like politics and economics, but we need to focus on narratives,” I said in a recent interview. “As a young child, who do you think you are? Do you see your country as a place where great people have worked? Do you see possibilities? I want to be part of that work. I was disciplined for the first five years, I told Nigerian stories. Now, I want to tell multiple African stories in multiple formats in multiple nations.”

Neither a phony ‘Africa is rising’ nor an incomplete ‘Africa needs help’ - but the gorgeous, complex reality of who we are, how we got here and what makes us truly beautiful, to ourselves and to the world.

I want to tell us about our own epic-ness - lands built, wars won and civilizations constructed. Tech companies, Afrobeats icons and political disruptors. For us to see ourselves truly, and to fall in love with the picture we see.

How Abuja was built from nothing, how Rwanda rose from war, how Senegal insisted on democracy. For a young person in Lome to understand their place in the world. For a mother in Lusaka to understand why her country matters. From the streets of Mobassa through the clubs of Port Harcourt to the tents of Kalahari.

And I want us to tell them from a rooted African point of view - interpreting civilisation and reality on our own terms. This point of view will be made in Africa, sprung from Africa - and not a response to the West. It is not a reaction to ‘Whiteness’ or ‘Privilege’. It pays no heed to what others say we are.

Instead it is inward-facing and self-sufficient. Confident and self-assured. This point of you comes from inside and around us, based on and shaped around our unique and shared realities. Our point of view must be rooted in ourselves. It is an Africa-First perspective.

Africa is a jungle? That’s fine - jungles are about abundance. 
Western media doesn’t show enough African sky scrapers? Since when did skyscrapers become the test of a grounded civilisation?
We don’t live on huts? What’s wrong with eco friendly, environmentally sustainable ethnic homes?
A global mental health crisis? Africa has largely been insulated and we can teach the world how.

We will tell stories and build models from this perch.

Not the NY Times’s perspective, but Lynn Ngugi’s clear voice. 
Not Netflix’s gaze, but Funke Akindele’s deep audience connection.
Not CNN’s energy, but Kwado Sheldon’s wholesome clarity. 
Not CCTV’s muscle, but our own homegrown models.

It’s a positive vision for African, driven by people and stories. 

We will inspire, find, train and incubate and collaborate the young storytellers to make this happen.

Hosting Africa’s biggest talk concert, #WithChudeLive is the line I am drawing in the sand for this turning point.

Welcome to a new dispensation.

(Link to register is in bio.)

#MadeInAfrica
#MadeFromAfrica
#MadeforAfrica
#WithChudeLive
#ChudeIsCelebrating

[Toun @TounSully]

@ipNXTweet please restore my Internet service. It’s been 5 days of the same excuses!!!!

[Chairman AW @AffiSupaStar]

Honor your commitment, not your mood

[Toun @TounSully]

How do y’all watch football every weekend? My heart ehn!

[Toun @TounSully]

😔😔😔
In 2023!!!

[Tayo Oviosu 🗽 @oviosu]

A major Nigerian bank is rejecting a resolution because it was signed using DocuSign.

Their feedback is that we should sign "physically or digitally." 🙈

[Toun @TounSully]

👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

[Toun @TounSully]

Please 🙏🏽 and thanks 🙏🏽
@jidesanwoolu

[Zeal A. Jacobson @zeal_a]

Dear @followlasg @jidesanwoolu

This is Ozumba approaching tollgate

Skid marks show that some poor driver’s tyre got ruptured

Last year a similar pothole ripped open my tyre as well.

The value of life has to mean something and we can’t entertain these avoidable deathtraps!!

[Toun @TounSully]

100% if my inner circle 😩

[Man of Letters. @Letter_to_Jack]

Japa curse: I miss my friends.

Last night as I writhed in ear pains, I decided to distract myself with positive thoughts, then I asked myself how big a party we would throw if me and madam decided to have another baby.

I tried to make a list of my friends and how each of them would turn up to slay with their families on the day (as band of brothers that we are). Then it occured to me that roughly 80% of my best friends have already left Nigeria or have plans to leave by September.

That moment, the realization dawned on me: I suddenly realized that I was half-naked, quality-friends wise, and that I needed to be open to making new friends among a list of people I was not familiar with their humble beginnings and stories.

I don't intend to relocate, at least not in the near future but I respect people who see it as a fresh start and an escape from the torments of this country. I'm also very much aware that once people relocate they are starting new lives and prior existing relationships will never be the same again. (time difference, pressure etc).

However, I can't help but wonder: how is it possible that, despite the fact that we are not actively at war, I've lost nearly 80% of my best friends—a list I carefully and meritoriously compiled over a period spanning more than 15 years—to the nefarious hands of immigration, sparked and catalysed solely by wicked and greedy SOBs that we have as leaders and their stupid policies?

Our political ruling class mismanaged our resources and the potential of our brilliant/talented younger population to the point that everything is now unstable, including human relationships. The past is depressing, the present is miserable and the future is bleak.

I appreciate having true friends. I occasionally sit with them, rubbing off on them as they do the same for me. For that reason, I have to make new friends once more, hoping (not that it's a curse) that they are not already in the final stages of their relocation plans and as well praying that they are genuinely beautiful people. This kept me awake for most of the night...

Nigeria, please work in my lifetime. Please.

[Toun @TounSully]

😅😅

[Fola Olatunji-David @folasanwo]

London is wild! Uber driver has been on phone tracking his car that was jacked last night. He’s called police but wants to go storm the place first. Asked me if I want to come too…

Me keh? As what sir? Baba drop me and collect your 1 star for almost endangering my life abeg🙏🏾

[Toun @TounSully]

Untested faith is unreliable.
Remember that!

[Toun @TounSully]

@Oladayo01 Keep ‘em coming. Dem plenty 😫

[Jentezen Franklin @Jentezen]

Sometimes you need to thank God for what didn’t happen.

[Toun @TounSully]

You will never reach a vague goal.

Be specific. Be intentional. #TheYear2023

[Toun @TounSully]

U. N. U. S. U. A. L.
E. L. E. V. A. T. I. O. N.
#TheYear2023

[Toun @TounSully]

Love never fails.

[Jim Kwik @jimkwik]

Write a happy story in 3 words

[Toun @TounSully]

I am only a light, when I have the light - His light - shine through me!

[Toun @TounSully]

@WaleSu00 Ofcourse not! Behave plix

[Toun @TounSully]

Don’t make impulsive decisions. Don’t choose instant gratification. In life and love and everything in between, it is important to count the cost of the decisions you make, before you make them.

[Toun @TounSully]

We need to put our trust in what God has ultimately promised, not what we can immediately see.

[Toun @TounSully]

Trusting God’s Word above what we can see. That’s the very definition of faith.