“The journey of a thousand mile begins with one step” that was the case with a young social media influencer, Abdulsalam Idris popularly known as Smallie on Twitter when he took advantage of the COVID-19 lockdown period to compile trending gists for easy accessibility.

Idris was not thinking of being an influencer when it all started as he said it was not “planned” but born out of his love for Twitter.

“It wasn’t planned. I can’t say something inspired me to start doing it, it was just in the heat of the moment but with time, it became intentional. It was on a very busy day on the timeline with many stories and gist that many people couldn’t cover at that time, so I decided to put those gists in a thread.

“A lot of people were grateful because I saved them the stress of searching for gist everywhere on the timeline and they enjoyed it because I infused touches of humor in the gists. People also encouraged me to continue because it was lockdown period and many gists will still come to the timeline,” he explained.

“So I was basically the lockdown gist reporter,” he added.

The undergraduate student of Mechanical Engineering in Ado Bayero Kano, recently reached a milestone of over 500,000 followership on Twitter due to his consistency in content creation which attracted massive engagement as his page, “Gist with Smallie” became a go-to place where people search for events and recent happenings.

To him, Twitter created an opportunity for influencing which brings food to the table since his school is no longer in session due to the prolonged ASUU strike which has made so many students idle but he decided to cease the opportunity to build a name in the digital space.

The Kogi state indigene also spoke on issue of regularizing social media: “I think people should be free to air their opinions.

“A lot of people want to express themselves and the only platform they have for that is social media. So passing a bill may create a lot of discomfort for a lot of people,” he said.

Idris can also be associated with the popular movie” introducing the Kujus” which is one major project he handled. His hobbies are Traveling, Sport and Photography.