It was 10 AM in Vancouver, and Izunna Dike still hadn’t slept. He had spent the night editing a video for TikTok and Instagram, where he had nearly 500K followers. For the past few days, he’d been sharing a series called Nigeria Diaries, documenting his last visit home. But just as he was about to post his latest video, TikTok flagged the sound for copyright infringement, forcing him to re-edit with a new song.
This kind of late-night grind has become routine for him. Over the past few years, as he’s carved out a space for himself in the world of Nigerians filming their cooking journeys online, he’s learned to adapt, improvise, and keep creating.
In this week’s #MadeinNigeria, Izunna talks about how he got into food, why he puts crayfish in creamy pasta, and why he believes X is a dog-eat-dog space.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
When did you leave the country?
People don’t know that I’ve lived in the UK before. So when I tell them I left in 2021, it sounds like I seem a bit too foreign for someone who just left that recently. But actually, I schooled in the UK and lived there for a while. When I came back to Nigeria, I like to say it was for NYSC, but the truth is, I was homesick. I was also in love, and NYSC just happened to be available at the same time, so I did it as well. I went to Anglia Ruskin University.
I studied architecture. I did a one-year foundation course at the same university, which was originally founded in Cambridge. I was in Cambridge for a year before moving to Chelmsford, Essex, for the main course.
What is the giveaway that you’ve been abroad for longer with people do you find?
The first thing is probably how I navigate diaspora living. Take my platform, for example—I’m always sharing resources on ingredients and their alternatives. For someone who has only been living here for a few years, it might seem like, ‘How do you know all these things?’ It can come across as if I’ve gathered a lot of knowledge about the struggles of living in the diaspora in a short time. Another thing is probably how I talk—it doesn’t give ‘newcomer’ vibes. I don’t think my accent is anything special. But interestingly, here in Canada, people mistake me for British, which I find funny because there’s nothing British about my accent. Still, some people say they can hear a bit of British in it.
Yesterday was a statutory holiday, but in the UK, they call it a bank holiday. So when I come into work, I might say, “Did you enjoy your bank holiday?” or something like that. Using “bank holiday” is a giveaway that I’m from the UK.
Do you work full-time?
Last year, I left my full-time job. I was working as a climate resilience planner, focusing on climate action and preparing for the negative effects of climate change. My work was primarily related to buildings and carbon emissions. For example, we had clients—let’s say, in a Nigerian context, Ikeja Electricity—who would come to us as consultants and say, “We want to reduce our carbon emissions.” We would then research their buildings and locations and provide recommendations on how to make them more sustainable. We’d also assess potential environmental risks. For instance, we could create a flood risk map and tell them, “Based on our projections, your Ikoyi branch could be underwater by 2050, so you need to prepare for that.” We have databases we use to reference this information before reporting back to clients.
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Why did you leave?
I left on mutual consent, which is just a way of saying I was laid off. I decided to put all my focus on content creation for now.
Does monetising your content sustain you financially?
There are different factors involved. Content creation should be enough to sustain me, but unfortunately, I’m in a system where my cultural background and being a person of colour come into play. When it comes to brands paying creators, they often lowball me compared to what they’d pay a white Canadian counterpart with a smaller platform. So, there are always challenges. I’m still in the early stages of figuring it all out. Right now, all I can say is that things aren’t great, but I hope to navigate this space, grow, and eventually become a point of reference for others who want to take this path.
I think about financial security and peace of mind a lot. Being a content creator is almost like being a freelancer, and in Canada, TikTok doesn’t have a creator fund like in the US or the UK. So, Canadian creators don’t get paid directly from TikTok, unlike their US counterparts, who can actually sustain themselves solely from it.
Why don’t you do YouTube?
I’m not a YouTuber, but I should be. I feel like I was built for YouTube. I need to work on long-format videos, but it feels like a lot of work. I know I should immerse myself in YouTube because of my vlogs and recipes. My content really requires longer videos because short-form doesn’t always do it justice. Right now, I have to trim everything down to fit into one-minute clips. But there’s a big audience asking me for more in-depth recipe videos and vlogs that I don’t have to cut up so much. I see vlogging as a huge part of my platform’s future because I aspire to be a food and travel vlogger—if that makes sense.
I really want to explore West African food. I want to be the face of West African cuisine, the same way you have people representing Middle Eastern cuisine or British cuisine. We need that kind of representation. I feel like there’s a real opportunity for me to dive deep into it. When I started this, I didn’t have a long-term vision—I was just vibing. But as I’ve found myself in this space, I’ve begun to realise that there are opportunities and spaces where someone like me, with my interests, charisma, and talent, can actually be of value.
Will you say your food tastes good?
I like to believe my food is good. I know it is. The only problem is, most of the time, I’m the one tasting it. It always tastes good to me. I mean, if I cook nonsense, I’ll know I cooked nonsense. If it’s not up to my standard, I’ll know. But normally, when my food meets my own standards. I’m confident that anybody should like it. Anybody. And I think that confidence comes from knowing good food when I taste it—I’m very strict with what I enjoy.
Honestly, part of the reason I started cooking was because I felt people were cooking rubbish—no offence. I’d go to a restaurant, and I just wouldn’t be satisfied. I’d think, “This food could be better,” and then I’d go home and make something better. So, I think I’m a good judge of good Nigerian food, especially when I taste something that’s not great.
Some people might think it’s alright, but when I give my constructive criticism, they often agree. For example, if I tell someone, “I think this fish didn’t cook as long as it should have,” I’ve had moments where they admit, “Yeah, I was actually a bit impatient.” Everyone else might be eating it fine, but I’ll feel like it could’ve been crispier. It’s the little details that make a difference.
You broke against the convention when you put crayfish in creamy pasta.
The conversation around crayfish is funny because people still try to be shady or sneaky about it. And I’m like, excuse me—this is a shrimp dish, what do you think crayfish is? Crayfish is just an intensified shrimp flavour. It’s like shrimp on Pro Max. It’s a dried shrimp flavour.
One time, I made creamy pasta, and it tasted good, but something was missing. It was slacking. And from my gut, everything in me said, “This thing needs crayfish.” So I sprinkled a bit on it, and when I tasted it again, everything came together. What was a six became a solid eight. I always tell people, when you cook, just make a small batch and add crayfish to it—see how it tastes. But I get why people don’t understand it.
I’m not even the biggest fan of crayfish in certain dishes. In my video with Justin Ug, he put crayfish in his jollof rice, and I pointed it out because he didn’t even realize it’s not standard to put crayfish in jollof. I’m Igbo, and even I go against my fellow Igbo people sometimes—especially Enugu people.
Even me, talking now—I grew up in a home where we put crayfish in jollof rice. On regular weekdays, my sister and mom used to cook jollof with crayfish, and it used to piss me off. Sunday jollof was different—no crayfish. But that everyday jollof? They always put it inside.
But I’m going to admit something I’ve never admitted before—sometimes, you crave that native-style jollof. The one cooked with a little base of palm oil, smoked mackerel, and a bit of crayfish. It’s a nice dish, and it’s not complete without the smoked mackerel. I used to eat it at my uncle’s house. My cousin used to cook it, and I think it’s one of those rice dishes that they slow-cook, so it comes out firm but not sticky.
You’ve also been in the thick of the “Igbo people are in Rivers” debate.
I’m Igbo. And I’ve been in the middle of that debate very aggressively recently because I feel like some people pushing that narrative are doing it for malicious reasons. It erases the identity of Igbo people in Rivers State.
The idea of Igbos in Rivers State shouldn’t be up for debate—it’s a very visible population. Even if you take the Ikwerre people aside, there are other Igbo groups, like the Ndoki people, which I am part of. We are very present in Rivers State.
The whole conversation is nuanced, but it has become trickier than it should be.
When it comes to the identity of Igbos in Rivers State, there are certain areas where we identify as Igbo. This whole recent argument of whether we are Igbo or not is a new phenomenon—it was never a thing before. Ikwerre people have decided to identify as Ikwerre, and I can respect that. What I don’t like is when they push the narrative that there are no Igbo people in Rivers State.
Ikwerre people should have their identity respected, but at the same time, Igbo people exist in Rivers State. Some accept this, and some oppose it.
Why do you think your content has resonated so much with people?
I think I was bringing something very new to the Nigerian food space. For a while, Nigerian food content wasn’t entertaining. What I brought was entertainment—my humour, my organic and somewhat unhinged energy. The thing is, before I became a creator, I was a consumer. I really consumed content. I know what good content should be like. I know what people will see and think, “This looks good.” And when I make good content, I know I’ve made good content as well.
How did you start out as a creator?
It actually started with me posting food pictures on Twitter, and people would be like, “This looks good.” But at the same time, I already had a Twitter platform that wasn’t really food-related. I had maybe 4,000 followers, and I had tens of viral tweets—just funny, unhinged thoughts.
So I started thinking about it. At the same time, people were telling me, “Izunna, have you thought of being a content creator?” And this wasn’t even about food content; it was just about me being on the internet, making my unhinged and quirky jokes. And I thought, “Maybe if I can put these two things together, it will be something.” So I did. I started pushing both for a long time.
When I moved to Canada, I was studying disaster management. And I told myself that after my program, I was going to take content creation seriously. So when I was done, I had no excuse.
At first, I was just doing it for the vibes, and I noticed people were really messing with what I was doing. It picked up on Twitter, and from there, I started pushing my Instagram and TikTok. Everything just grew at the same time. Twitter was my first big platform. When I had 13,000 followers on Twitter, I still had just 5,000 on Instagram and 3,000 on TikTok. Then, all of a sudden, I was looking at 15k, 30k, 40k—and Twitter, which used to be my biggest platform, became my smallest. And I liked it that way.
I think I deliberately didn’t grow my Twitter account as much as my Instagram because I wanted to maintain a space where I could still be unhinged. I didn’t rebrand it into a “Cook with Izunna” page. I just remained Izunna Dike.
I have seen them drag you a couple of times.
That’s actually one of the reasons I didn’t want my Twitter page to get too big—because even as small as it is, it already feels too big. I think everyone just wants a place where they can be normal.
For a long time, I was very anti-burner account, but I realised that if I had to say it in secret, then there was no point saying it at all. It wasn’t that I was saying wild things—I was just being honest. But like someone once said, “Twitter is not a school of philosophy where you exchange knowledge and have discussions. It’s a place where you support your guy and wish the other guy death.” It’s a dog-eat-dog space.
Sometimes, I bring up conversations, hoping people will engage with opposing views in a respectful way, but instead, people just attack me, and then I go at them too, and it gets chaotic. I haven’t done that in over a year now. I’m still a little mischievous sometimes because I can’t completely let go of the banter, but I don’t say anything that’s problematic or deliberately provocative anymore.
There are some topics I see and just skip. Like when it comes to conversations about women and abortion, I remind myself, “Izunna, you’re a man. Just skip.”
Do you see yourself living in Nigeria full-time?
I would love to live in Nigeria, but I don’t think the country offers me the security I want. When there’s inflation here in Canada, you’re not too scared because the people in charge are sensible enough not to let it get out of hand. But when things start getting bad in Nigeria, you just don’t know how bad it can get. Living in Nigeria means living with uncertainty. And then there are other forces, like landlords. Look at what’s happening in Lagos. Even when I convert my dollars to naira, things are still expensive. The amount you pay for an Uber in Nigeria sometimes feels like you’re paying more in Canada—but for a less comfortable ride.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
I really hope to have a flourishing YouTube show where celebrities cook with me. It’s like a podcast, but we’re cooking. The concept is that we go grocery shopping together, plan and cook a meal, and while we’re cooking, I ask them questions. We just have a conversation. That’s more of a long-term vision for where I see myself.
But ultimately, I see myself travelling to understand different palettes around the world so I can bring that knowledge back to Nigeria and say, “This is something you’ll love.” I really want people to trust my taste so that when I say something is good, they believe me and enjoy it too.
