Speaking Igbo doesn’t limit my audience – Nwanyi Nnewi

Digital creator, Pamela Mbaefo popularly known as nwanyi Nnewi, has 170, 000 followers on Instagram, and 190, 300 followers on Tiktok. She tells Naomi Chima about her style of content creation and other issues

Tell us about yourself and your family background.

I am from Anambra State. I graduated from Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, where I studied Food Science and Technology. I come from a family of nine children, and I am the seventh child.

How did your content creation journey begin?

The whole story started during the COVID-19 pandemic when everybody was at home. The first video I made was with my brother’s friend’s phone. I didn’t really start with my current name; I started with something else. I was just talking, trying to be funny and playing around with things happening around me.

I was trying to mimic Lasisi, but instead of using the big-mouth effect he used on Snapchat, I was using another filter called Coon. When COVID-19 was over and I went back to school, I started figuring out how to create African mother content. I answered different names before settling on my current name. It wasn’t really easy, but I have been navigating. My aim was not to grow a page; I just wanted to make people laugh.

Then, I had a friend who started creating content before me. I reached out to him and told him I wanted to start. He offered to have me on his team, but I was required to pay, and I didn’t have the money. So, I wasn’t consistent. I was always following friends who wanted to shoot content.

One day, I waited for them for several hours, but the shoot didn’t hold. I became frustrated and decided to take a break from content creation.

In 2022, I picked it up again, this time more seriously. A mentor told me, “Don’t wait for people. Create something you can do by yourself.” That was when I started creating monologue content, talking to myself. That style of content is what really pushed me to where I am today.

What were your biggest challenges at the beginning?

One of my biggest challenges was not having a good phone. I used my cousin’s phone for a while. After my brother’s friend left, I kept borrowing my cousin’s phone whenever I wanted to shoot.

One day, he got upset and told me that I should stop coming to use it. That was the last time I went there to borrow a phone.

I was between 300 and 400 level at the time. Later, I started using my father’s phone until I stopped using Snapchat and returned fully to school. Things changed after that.