How Mayowa Idowu became Nigeria’s culture custodian
Culture Custodian’s co-founder and Editor In Chief on building Nigeria's leading youth culture publication
“When people ask me for something, I take it seriously. I’ll show up, even if I don’t want to be there.”
Mayowa Idowu is explaining why, more than a decade into building one of Nigeria’s most influential youth culture media platforms, he still turns up to events—press conferences, panel discussions, brand activations, product launches—the sort of gatherings that most media founders would have long outsourced to younger editors or interns. For him, it’s his way of remaining in the arena and honouring the relationships that have built the ecosystem, the same one he’s been working in since Culture Custodian launched in 2014.
Culture Custodian exists somewhere between a magazine, a creative studio, and a cultural archive. It has produced everything from irreverent commentary and longform essays to original podcasts and experimental series that mirror the way young Nigerians consume content. Its power lies not in its size but in its sensibility: informed, curious, plugged into the heart of Nigeria’s youth culture, and quietly self-assured.
That sensibility traces back to Idowu’s childhood. He grew up in a home where the media wasn’t an abstract idea. His father, a journalist, and his mother, a lawyer, filled the house with books, newspapers, and magazines. “I used to write for an audience of one,” he says, “and that audience was my dad.” Holidays ended with essay assignments, and every piece of writing was graded with the same seriousness his father gave his newsroom. If his father taught him rigour, his mother taught him range: she read everything from Danielle Steel novels to gossip magazines like City People. “So I never learned to look down on stories,” he says. “I just consumed everything, and to a large extent, that’s what shaped my sense of culture.”
In secondary school, his curiosity found a workshop. Idowu attended Corona Secondary School, an institution known as much for its academics as for the kind of students it produced, some of whom would later become the architects of Nigerian pop culture, including visual artist Dennis Osadebe, founder of The Republic, Wale Lawal, and a sapling African giant, Burna Boy.
He was good at English and Government, terrible at maths, and drawn to anything that allowed him to write, argue, or perform, like debates or yearbook committees. Beyond the classroom, Idowu ran his first business, Blue Magic, a food company formed under Corona’s business education programme, Junior Achievement. Blue Magic was a real business, complete with shareholders, products, and dividends. “We raised capital, sold food, and actually paid out dividends at the end of the term. It was the first time I understood how ideas could become something real, something you could hold, sell, or build on.”
After secondary school, he moved to England for A-levels, where he could for the first time choose the subjects he wanted. He picked History, Literature, Sociology, and Psychology. “It was the first time I actually enjoyed school. I wasn’t forced to do Maths or Biology,” he said. The British education system, with its emphasis on interpretation rather than rote memorisation, suited him. “I realised I was actually kind of smart.”
Law, however, remained the family expectation. His mother had studied it, and his maternal grandfather was a judge. Studying Law was less ambition and more inheritance. “It was one of those legacy things.” But even in Law School, Idowu’s real education was elsewhere. At the University of Kent, he began writing seriously, first on a personal blog where he posted essays, profiles, and interviews. One of his earliest pieces was a conversation with Burna Boy, then an upstart making his debut. Others were profiles of classmates, musicians, and people he found interesting. During one holiday he took a summer school course in International Journalism at the London School of Economics.
His blog grew a small following, but he disliked that it bore his full name. “I didn’t want my name to be the brand. I wanted something less me-centric,” he said. “Something that reflected more than my own taste.”
That impulse to create something bigger than himself led to the creation of Culture Custodian. He launched it in his final year of university, funding it with money his godmother had given him for his 21st birthday. “Instead of using it to have a good time, I used it to build the website,” he says. “I wanted it to be proper-proper, not just a blogspot.”
When he moved back to Nigeria after Law School, Culture Custodian was still finding its identity. “At the beginning, we didn’t really have one,” he admits. “We knew we wanted to do something like Complex or Fader, but created by Nigerians, with Nigerians in mind.”
After graduating and returning to Lagos, Idowu worked briefly as a lawyer. It paid the bills, but it didn’t fit. His real work lay with Culture Custodian. In 2018, he quit. “If I was going to take Culture Custodian seriously, I had to give it everything.”
Through it all, Culture Custodian’s engine has been experimentation. “I read a lot, I consume a lot,” Idowu explains. “When I find something I like, I ask, ‘What does this look like in a Nigerian context?’” That question birthed many of the publication’s signature projects, like Sex Diaries and My First Million
For instance, with My First Million, Idowu wanted to create a series on how Nigerians earned, spent, and understood wealth. For months, he had been workshopping the series, but then Zikoko beat him to publication with Nairalife. Idowu was livid. “I remember coming on the timeline one day and seeing Nairalife. I was so upset.” But the frustration became fuel. Watching Dragon’s Den and reading a Financial Times article helped him rethink the concept, reshaping it into something distinct.
He describes his editorial philosophy through an old-school metaphor. “I think of media like a newspaper,” he says. “When you ask people what their favourite part of the newspaper was as a child, some say sports, some say politics, some say cartoons. The goal isn’t to please everyone, but to make sure everyone finds something they love.” That approach explains Culture Custodian’s range, from podcasts like Carnivores to TikTok explainers about the figures on Nigeria’s naira notes. “We just keep trying new ways to tell stories, and the audience tells us what works.”
That philosophy extends beyond formats to the brand’s entire ethos. Last month, Culture Custodian launched the first edition of The Custodian, their annual print magazine. The Custodian is Idowu’s attempt at creating the ultimate collector’s item to reach a new audience with highbrow storytelling.
As Culture Custodian enters its second decade, Idowu is restless. “This can’t be our final form,” he says. “We’ve not made a billion off this.” He laughs, but then turns serious. “My priority now is how to make Culture Custodian the best it can be. The work we do is very important, and I’m obsessed with how we can be better, how we can be bigger.”
His ambitions stretch beyond media, into film, books, and strategy. “I want to make documentaries, I want to write books, I want to sit on boards and advise people,” he says. “I think I have access to information, and if I can use that to help people get the outcomes they want, I’d love to do that.”
But for now, he’s still showing up at events, in meetings, in the culture. “Sometimes when I meet people and they say they’ve never heard of Culture Custodian, I’m like, how can you not?” he says, smiling. “But then I remind myself: you need to work so that people will hear of it.”
And so he keeps working, still in the arena, one story, one experiment, one idea at a time.