Legit.ng (formerly Naij.com) is a Nigerian digital media and news platform. It is ranked as the #1 news and entertainment platform and the 7th overall most visited website in Nigeria by

Alexa Internet Alexa Internet, Inc. was an American web traffic analysis company based in San Francisco. It was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon. Alexa was founded as an independent company in 1996 and acquired by Amazon in 1999 for $250 million in stock. ...

. Legit.ng is the biggest publisher on

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

by the audience in ‘Media’ category.

History

Founded in 2012, Legit.ng has its headquarters in

Ikeja Ikeja is the capital city of Lagos State in southwestern Nigeria. Its population, as of the 2006 census, is 313,196. Prior to the emergence of military rule in the early 1980s, Ikeja was a well planned, clean and quiet residential and commercia ...

Lagos Lagos (Nigerian English: ; ) is the largest city in Nigeria and the List of cities in Africa by population, second most populous city in Africa, with a population of 15.4 million as of 2015 within the city proper. Lagos was the national ca ...

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

and launched an editorial hub in the country’s capital,

Abuja Abuja () is the capital and eighth most populous city of Nigeria. Situated at the centre of the country within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), it is a planned city built mainly in the 1980s based on a master plan by International Plann ...

, in May 2015. Legit.ng is partner of Genesis Media global consumer Internet company which also cooperates with

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(in Kenya) and

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(in Ghana). In May 2014, Legit.ng released an Android mobile app. It soon became #1 in its category in Nigeria and was featured by Google Play Market. The app hit 500,000 installs in 10 months. The all-time number of installs is now getting close to 5M. In June 2015, Legit.ng partnered with browser software makers

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and telecoms giant

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to bring "one million days of free Internet to Nigeria". The website's servers were attacked by hackers in July 2015. In August 2015, a news section in the

Hausa Hausa may refer to: * Hausa people, an ethnic group of West Africa * Hausa language, spoken in West Africa * Hausa Kingdoms, a historical collection of Hausa city-states * Hausa (horse) or Dongola horse, an African breed of riding horse See also * ...

language was launched. In February 2016, Legit.ng was among the first in Nigeria to roll out Facebook’s instant articles. In 2017, Facebook did a case study of this launch with Legit.ng and published the story in the Facebook Audience Network. In March 2017, Legit.ng started a local journalism project to connect the reporters representing all the 36 states and the FCT. In the same period, a missing person initiative was launched, which in future helped Nigerians find their loved ones and return them home. In October 2018, Naij.com changed its name to Legit.ng. In February 2019, Legit.ng was among 87 media organizations selected across 28 countries to receive

Google News Initiative The Google News Lab is a global team at Google whose mission is to "collaborate with journalists and entrepreneurs to help build the future of media". Launched in 2015, the team works with news organizations to help drive innovation, address indus ...

funds. In July 2019, Legit.ng received an award for the most people-friendly online platform for election coverage during the 2019 polls. The recognition was held at the Suncity Champion of Democracy and Development Awards held in Abuja. A new desk, human interest, was launched to tell more stories about outstanding Nigerians both at home and in the diaspora in February 2020. In October 2020, Legit.ng organized Big Naija Independence prominent student contest to celebrate Nigeria's 60th Independence. The Big Naija Independence contest was aimed at spotting young talented students passionate about journalism and writing.

Popularity

As of July 2015, it has more than 13 million monthly readers and is ranked as the 7th overall most visited website in Nigeria and the first among publishers by

Alexa Alexa may refer to: Technology *Amazon Alexa, a virtual assistant developed by Amazon * Alexa Internet, a defunct website ranking and traffic analysis service * Arri Alexa, a digital motion picture camera People *Alexa (name), a given name and ...

. Currently the website's

community has over 4.3 million members. Legit.ng is the biggest publisher on Facebook by the audience in ‘Media’ category. In October 2018 the number of Legit TV

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

channel subscribers exceeded 100,000 and the page got verified by the network. It has been ranked among the top 50 YouTube channels in Nigeria by vidooly.com.

Contributors

Bloggers and columnists include Japheth J. Omojuwa,

Tolu Ogunlesi Tolu Ogunlesi (born 3 March 1982) is a Nigerian journalist, poet, photographer, fiction writer, and blogger. Ogunlesi was appointed to the role of special assistant on digital/new media by President Muhammadu Buhari on 18 February 2016.

, and Ogunlowo Joseph. Legit.ng also generates content based on user-submitted stories.

References

External links

*{{official website, https://www.legit.ng/ Nigerian news websites Internet properties established in 2012 Nigerian companies established in 2012 Companies based in Lagos