Nigerian political satirist pokes fun at Peter Dutton

A popular Nigerian satirist and journalist is speaking in Australia.

Adeola Fayehun

Source: SBS

YouTuber Adeola Fayehun is known for telling the news a little differently. 

The 34-year-old Nigerian satirist is bold in her approach to bring political corruption among African officials to light, including in her home country Nigeria.

"Our only problem is our government officials, they steal so much money, they've been robbing us since independence, we've been scammed so much that we don't even recognise it anymore that we are being scammed," Ms Fayehun told SBS News.

In Australia for the Perennial Annual Inaugural Chaser Lecture, she's now turned her attention to Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, criticising his comments about migrants and refugees.

"It would've been wonderful to meet Peter Dutton," Ms Fayehun said.

"Everybody is an immigrant, everybody came from somewhere ... If you look down maybe [Peter Dutton's] great great grandfather came to Australia at some point and now he's labelling all Africans as gangs.

Adeola Fayehun
Source: SBS


"Africa is a big continent so if you have some Africans here, it doesn't necessarily reflect what the whole African community is doing."

200,000 followers

Ms Fayehun moved to the US when she was 19-years-old for college, and was surprised to find stable electricity and running water.

"I never had two weeks of stable electricity [in Nigeria]," Ms Fayehun said.



"When I got to the United States and I saw how life is, I felt cheated ... And I was like this had to stop, I have to do something about it."

It was then she started producing her own videos, which soon turned into YouTube channel 'Keeping up with Adeola' which now has over 200,000 subscribers. 

"I studied journalism and I know how to edit videos so I thought I would combine that with talking about something that I'm really passionate about which is corruption among government officials," Ms Fayehun said.



Recently she has been talking about Cameroon.

"They just had an election. And you know I talked about how ridiculous it was that the president was seeking reelection for a seventh time," Ms Fayehun said.

"By the way he said he would do better if given a seventh chance, which is ironic."

She has a reputation of asking questions others won't.



In 2015, Adeola fired questions at then-president of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe.

She asked him "don't you think it's time to step down" and "when will there be change in Zimbabwe". 

It gained global attention, and as a result she was even called a terrorist by a Zimbabwean politician. 


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3 min read

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By Natarsha Kallios



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