3
When Rajaatu Muhammed Ibrahim was announced as the TikTok Sub-Saharan Africa Creator of the Year, the room held its breath, but the winner was in total shock. To her millions of followers, she is Chef Badariya, the culinary virtuoso who turned a single Hausa song into a pan-African movement. To the academic world, she is a double-master’s degree holder and a former primary school teacher with a passion for teaching. Rajatu’s journey from a “TikTok skeptic” who thought the. platform was only for dancers to the continent’s most influential creator is a masterclass in organic growth and cultural pride. In this exclusive sit-down with TOMI FALADE, she opens up about the niece who downloaded the app for her, the husband who pushed her into entrepreneurship, and her emotional mission to prove to Northern Nigerian women that the digital world isn’t just about “showing up”—it’s about touching lives.
At the point that you were announced as winner, how did you feel?
Honestly, I wasn’t expecting it. It came to me as a shock. I was out of breath. It felt like a dream. I was really excited when my name was mentioned on that stage.
How did your TikTok journey start to the point that you have become the creator of the year?
Tiktok was the last social media platform I joined back in 2021 or 2022, I can’t really remember. One of my husband’s nieces came over for holiday and told me that there’s this app that people are using. I didn’t know about it. My Instagram was cool already. She was actually the one that told me so much about TikTok. She was like, you could even share your recipes.
I thought the app was just for dancers, people that use that use music to dance, but she said, no, it’s for everybody. I thought okay, let’s give it a try. She showed me everything, she downloaded the app for me, showed me how to use music, how to post. I’m still navigating around it, I’m telling you. Her name was Aisha. Unfortunately, we lost Aisha last year. So when I won the award, I didn’t know I was going to win, but I was meant to thank Aisha because she actually downloaded that app for me, and I wish she were here to actually see it. I didn’t plan any speech. I just said what was in my head.
When I started using it, whatever post I make on Instagram, I do the same on TikTok. If I post on Instagram 6pm I’ll come to TikTok and post around 6:05pm, just around same time.
But honestly, it’s been an amazing platform. One thing I like about it is that most people that I connect with on TikTok are usually from northern Nigeria. There, they resonate more with my with my content than people on Instagram, so it’s been wonderful. The community over there on TikTok, very strong.
I see that you are now a believer. At what point did you become quite a sensation on TikTok?
I think it was around last year. I started using one song for all of my videos, and I became popular for that song. To the extent that people stopped calling me Chef Raja, and they started calling me Chef Badariya, because that is the title of the song. I started going viral with that sound. You wouldn’t believe that after I won the award, people are now using the sound.
How did content creation itself start for you? Why content creation? You could have done any other thing.
To be honest, when I started, I started more like an entrepreneur when I got married newly. I’ve always been this person who likes to cook, so when I got married, I was cooking for my husband. He was like, ‘ah, Princess, you know how to cook. Why don’t you start selling?’ I come from a home where we don’t believe in entrepreneurship. My father doesn’t believe in it, so I didn’t think it was going to fit me, I just tried it. I started cooking, and selling food. I would make pizza in one of my Instagram pages. Those were just cravings, but that was how it started. As time went on, I didn’t I realized that we have food bloggers in northern Nigeria, but most of them were speaking Hausa. I wanted to reach a wider community, I wanted other people to know about our food, so I thought, let me just start doing this blogging. When I started, I didn’t even know it was blogging, I just wanted to share recipes with people. I want people to know about Northern Nigerian culture and food. That was it for me. I started in 2020, but things were hard. I think I was a teacher back then, and I was doing content. I was a primary school teacher around that time, so I would go to school, come back home, do my content, sometimes in the night and stuff like that. But one thing that stood out for me, honestly, is the passion; I love people. I just wanted to keep telling them things, keep sharing the stories. So honestly, that was one of the things that just kept it burning for me as a content creator. I was doing all at the same time.
Are you still doing all at the same time?
I have a crazy life. I resigned as a teacher last year because I realized that I wasn’t doing much. And, you know, they say what is worth doing, is worth doing well. Whatever I’m doing in life, I always want to give it my all. But I realised that the content was affecting my teaching. I started traveling. Brands started reaching out for me to be present, so I couldn’t always be taking excuses where I was teaching to do content. When I started in 2020 I was already doing my first Masters in Information Technology. I was doing my masters, I was a teacher in a school here in Sokoto, and I was a content creator.
I finished my first master’s in Information Technology, I started another master’s in Guidance and Counseling, and then I have a crazy career to add to that. As I said, I am a people person, and I felt like information technology was not it for me, which is why I went back to do another master’s in Guidance and Counseling, because I love people. I want to connect with people and still do my content in a way.
You are so educated, well spoken, have a thriving career. One would not expect it to be on social media. Back in the day, people who are vast like you, are expected in maybe the halls of government or within the walls of a university, social media was not seen as a viable career like that. What’s your take on that shift, now that the professionals are the ones that are on social media educating people and interacting?
I’ve always wanted to be a teacher, but teaching doesn’t have to happen within the four walls of a classroom. I still am doing what I’ve always wanted to do, teach. I teach people on social media. People often ask me, and I always tell them that my dream job is to be a lecturer, they’ll be like, ‘you want to be broke for the rest of your life?’
I used to have a family friend who worked at the House of Reps, and he asked somebody to call me and ask me where I wanted to work, just to help. I was like, I want to be a lecturer in the university. They asked if I wanted to be broke for the rest of my life? For me, it’s one goal, teaching, and I’m doing exactly that on social media.
And the fact that I’m a content creator doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop being educated or I’m going to stop going to school. They are both important. I love reading. I love books, so I do my content, and at the end of the day, I still pursue my educational career.
What do you think is the future of content creation and social media in Nigeria?
I believe content creation has come to stay, because a lot of people even in government and the private sector, are dumping their jobs for content creation. And the fact that people are being monetised on social media, I believe, gives people more confidence to actually start it.
What’s your advice to someone who is looking up to you, particularly now that you have won Creator of the year Award on Tiktok?
My advice to them is that they shouldn’t give up on themselves, especially women from northern Nigeria. I don’t want to be emotional, but after winning this award, I got a lot of messages from women in northern Nigeria telling me how they wish they could do all that I’m doing. They have the potential, they have the education, they have the exposure, everything it takes, but they don’t have the support of the men in their lives, and that breaks my heart. But what I want to tell them is they should keep trying, and they should always try to make the men understand that it is not about them coming on social media to show themselves, but it’s about the impact they can make in the world. It’s about the lives they can touch and change on social media.
Read the full article here
