MyTori.NG hits its one-hundredth tori — and we can’t keep calm
It started like play, like play.
The whole idea was to show a mass communication student of a Nigerian university on a three-month internship with The Journalism Clinic what was possible by using his mobile phone as a tool for telling the stories of amazing people in his ‘hood. That was really it.
And, on 29 July 2021, a whole new storytelling experience was born. It is called mytori.ng.
Soon, it took a life of its own, with folk, ordinary and extraordinary, highs and lows, haves and have-nots, from around Nigeria, “telling their toris, in their own words, straight from their hearts. Because, of course, everyone has a story to tell. Sweet or sour.”
Or as Yinka Adegoke, editor, Strategic Initiatives, Rest of the World puts it: “(It is) important that we tell the story of the people, real people. There are so many untold stories.”
In the first tori, published on 29 July 2021, there is Liberty Oneshiagbe, who came to Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos, for the first time in 2017, became a private security guard, encountered a guy who worked as a rider with Gokada — a technology-driven company called which then moved people around the city on motorbikes and later, after a ban by the Lagos State Government. switched to delivering various kinds of parcels — and eventually joined Gokada as a rider, rising to be the head of the riders. You can read it here.
Two toris have been published every week since then and on 26 December 2021, there was a pause in honour of Born Photos, a legendary Nigerian photographer, whose tori was published on 20 December but died four days later, as well as revamping the website and the newsletter sent to subscribers’ email inboxes.
The morning after publication, the toris are shared on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, essentially for social engagement. As Stephen Oloh, the website’s developer said prior to its launch, “(our) focus should be on content. Mytori is about telling stories and should focus on that simple concept.”
It is for this reason that there is not a section for comments on the website. Now, you know.
Beneath each tori is a letter to the readers titled “TO KEEP US GOING”. This is a request for subscribers and financial support for the initiative.
I seize this opportunity to thank everyone who has responded while asking for more, more and more responses. You can subscribe here and support the initiative here. Many thanks.
Come Sunday, 31 July, the 100th tori will be published on the site and can you guess whose tori it is going to be from looking at the below picture? Clue: he is a master or super storyteller.
You cannot miss it.
If you are not yet a subscriber, please do, so that you can be among those to receive the toris in their email inboxes, hot and fresh, soon after publishing. And, yes, your support remains vital to the next 100 toris because as Prince Harry says, “…we have more in common than we think” and as late South Africa Bishop and 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu reminded us: “My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.”
Now, here is the 100th tori. Hot and fresh from the mint.
