The connection between Linda Ikeji, Afia Udofia and LindaIkejiSocial

Afia Udofia, technology consultant and Linda Ikeji, African blog queen

Afia Udofia, a native of Akwa Ibom according to his Linkedin profile is a Senior Consultant at Abstract Works Limited, an IT outsourcing and brand management firm based in Surulere,Lagos which according to our source he actually co-owns.

Linda Ikeji and Afia Udofia

Having first learnt about the relationship between Linda Ikeji and Afia Udofia a few months ago. We got confirmation that the both have something going when Lindaikejisocial.com was launched a few weeks ago. Afia happily shared the picture below on his Instagram page with the caption “Finally, after months of hardwork, #lindaikejisocial is born”

A careful research into this man with a relatively unknown company that had convinced Africa’s blog queen to finally take blogging from blogspot to her own name domain then to the next level pivot to a social network. How did he convince her where others had failed and what influence does he have on the decisions she had taken with her blog over the years?

Mr. Afia Udofia is the founder Abstract Works Limited and has worked in technology for over 8 years building web and mobile products. His company built the https://www.lindaikejisocial.com/ platform which according to Linda Ikeji had 50,000 signups in 24 hours, the largest for any homegrown platform in Nigeria ever.

Proud of his company’s work, Afia has continued to share content about the LIS platform on his social media pages

So many positive and negative articles have been written by techies in the local and foreign press about the LIS platform focusing on design, platform stability and framework.

The negatives haven’t deterred Linda Ikeji with her team launching online and offline adverts to drive adoption of the platform.

Furthermore, an investigative tests on the LindaIkeji social platform including a who is search revealed some interesting results. See for yourself below;

The domain name Lindaikejisocial.com, one of the most important assets of the social network is registered in the name of Afia Udofia and Abstract Works Ltd and not in Linda Ikeji or Linda Ikeji Media’s name. Checking the lindaikejisblog.com domain name, registrant information is blocked but a peek behind the veil may reveal some interesting things as well.

The biggest question this raises is why Linda Ikeji allowed Afia to register the domain name to his godaddy account which also houses his awltd.com domain. Is Linda Ikeji the full owner of Lindaikejisocial.com or just a name and revenue partner to drive up signups? or perhaps they are both part owners on the platform?

If Linda Ikeji actually owns the platform solely, then the risks of not owning the domain name for your business are enormous. A few years ago in a story we covered( also covered by Linda Ikeji), Konga and Jumia were at war over  look alike domain names that Konga accused Jumia of registering to divert traffic to their website as well as to stifle Konga’s expansion to other countries. Jason Njoku’s irokotv.com also faced a similar issue and won a case in court over registration of a similar domain name by another company in 2012.

If for some reason Afia Udofia and Linda Ikeji have a fallout, she runs the risk of losing access to her domains and files and will have a tough case in court as they are not registered in her name.

We hope to have a chat with Linda and Afia to clear some of these thoughts soon!.