By Peter Odah

The first time I heard about Sabi Radio, I thought it was a radio station, or maybe a podcast. It turned out to be neither, although I was close in spirit; it’s a new celebrity-entertainment publication with hundreds of thousands of readers and a secretive owner, which lends it an air of mystery and intrigue.

When I arranged to meet this person at a restaurant in Lagos island, I wasn’t quite sure who, or what, to expect. But I located him right away: an astute young man absorbed in the glow of his supersize smartphone. Christopher Sabi, just 28, already employs a handful of writers and a brand manager. He was raised in the suburbs of Lagos state.

After college, he took a job in an accountant’s office in Lagos but was fired for playing hooky to attend a screenwriting workshop at Ibadan. Rather than return to pencil-pushing, he started a BBNaija update page site in his spare time. It was to be an update page in the vein of BellaNaija or other popular online blogs, but with one crucial difference: Sabi Radio would be published entirely on Instagram.

There are numerous popular accounts on Instagram that, rather than posting personal snapshots, focus instead on aggregating humorous videos and memes. Sabi Radio does something similar, but narrows its scope to reality TV and celebrity news, so that it feels like an Internet-native Gist Magazine sprinkled throughout your feed. The typical Sabi Radio post is a screen shot paired with a snappy caption.

Sabi Radio is flourishing in a time when traditional media outlets are struggling to figure out their relationship with the new school way of reaching out to the Gen Zs.

After his initial success, Chris started Facebook and Twitter accounts for Sabi Radio and even a website, but its Instagram account feels the most lively. The format is nimble and lightweight, allowing Chris to publish stories that are newsworthy only within the context of the stream — the sort of outrageous moments online you might screen grab and send to friends.Since its start in early 2021, Sabi Radio has grown into a sustainable enterprise. Chris told me that advertisers pay several thousand nairas to run ads on his Instagram and Twitter feeds, which might help explain why Sabi Radio isn’t the only tabloidy Instagram account to gain popularity in the last year or two. There’s also Wahala Room and Remedy blog.

Sabi Radio’s account was already hacked and deleted once, and if someday Instagram decided to change its policies, his publication could vanish into the ether forever.

For now, Christopher Sabi is more excited by the possibilities than worried about the precariousness of his situation. Plus, the celebrities he covers seem to like what he does. But he recognizes that that could be fleeting, too.

Odah writes from Lagos