Every generation has always found somewhere to confess its worries. Today it is social media. 50 years ago, it was the advice columns of newspapers and magazines.

This month, I spent hours reading old issues of DRUM. Tucked inside was Dear Dolly, the agony aunt column that spent the 1970s replying to letters from young Nigerians trying to make sense of their love lives. 

We compiled 33 of those letters and published them. Reading them felt like eavesdropping on conversations that were never meant for us. They were often funny, but also tender. There was Stephen, whose girlfriend’s father threatened to call the police because he moved to his daughter. Then there was a 22-year-old Amadi, who became born again and wondered aloud how to break up with his four girlfriends.

These letters remind us that our parents and grandparents were once young, confused, heartbroken, hopeful, and trying to figure life out, just like we are now. This is why we spend hours rescuing fragile pages from old magazines and newspapers, because the ordinary moments are what make history feel alive.

If you believe these stories deserve to survive, support our work.

Become a member.

What Happened in July 2026

Making sense of elections

• This month, we launched the Election Context Project (ECP), our new initiative to help Nigerians make sense of today’s elections through historical records. We kicked things off with a video exploring how the last seven elections could define the next one.
• One of our first ECP stories took readers back to 1978, when electoral officials went from house to house registering Nigerians for voter cards, a reminder of what the process looked like before the long queues and registration centres we know today.
• Another one explored a simple idea: every election feels new, yet very little is. We traced familiar patterns that have repeated themselves across decades of Nigerian elections.
• Outside ECP, our weekly carousel revisited a 1977 TRUST magazine debate on couples living together before marriage. Nigerians had plenty to say then, and many of those opinions would not sound out of place today.
• On Previously in Nigeria, we returned to 1978, when a heavy rainfall triggered one of the worst floods in Ibadan’s history; to 1979, when football pools betting was banned, and to 1980, when a police raid ended with the death of 50 men after they were crammed into a Black Maria.
• Our work reached more than five million people this month and generated over 80,000 engagements. We also welcomed more than 7,000 new followers to our community.

The archive keeps giving

• In July, we digitised 12,421 pages, making it our strongest month of the year so far. This month’s additions include editions of The Guardian, The Punch and ThisDay from the early 2000s.
• While we haven’t uploaded as many new pages on the website as we’d like, due to engineering bottlenecks, the good news is that we finally have some motion. This month, we made 3,632 pages from 82 issues of African Concord, Spear and Flamingo magazines available on the website.
• Decades of fashion, politics, nightlife, cultural commentary and everyday life are now fully digitised, searchable and accessible to anyone, anywhere.

What’s Next: August 2026

You’ll receive a gift as soon as next month starts. 

The second episode of The Archivist is almost through post-production and ready for your eyes. The only way for you to prepare is to subscribe to the YouTube channel so you don’t miss it. 

For the rest of the month, we’ll be deepening our Election Context Project coverage. Our major editorial test is the August 15 Osun governorship election. It’s one of Nigeria’s most unusual elections, and over the coming weeks, we’ll explain why through a series of stories that place the election in its proper historical context.

You can follow the project here.

See you on August 27.