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Samuel Ogunkoya, popularly known as Samkul and founder of Wahala Room, is turning a personal brush with danger into a solution for millions of Nigerians.
In 2022, while walking through Ajah, Lagos, he was confronted by two men demanding his Apple Watch and cash. One even picked up a sharp object. “I was shocked because if nothing stopped them, God forbid, things could have ended badly,” he recalls.
That experience exposed a glaring gap in emergency response systems. “I asked myself, ‘Who do you call in a situation like this? What’s the 911 number for Nigeria, and does it even work?’” Samuel says. It was this moment that sparked the creation of Reskua, a mobile safety app designed to empower Nigerians.
“Fast forward, we developed Reskua. In its current V1 phase, if you are in danger, you can press the SOS button, and the community you’ve added will see your location and hear your audio. Or you can report on the timeline, and an audience of close to 10,000 Lagos citizens will see your post and respond,” he explains.
Samuel draws on a unique background that prepared him for this challenge. “Before Reskua, I existed at the intersection of two very different worlds. Growing up partly in Chicago gave me the engineer’s mindset: when you see a broken system, you build something to fix it. At the same time, running Wahala Room gave me a front-row seat to the anxieties of the average Nigerian. I realized awareness isn’t the same as safety.”
Reskua represents Samuel Ogunkoya’s pivot from reporting problems to engineering solutions. “I’m not just a tech founder guessing what people need; I’m a media founder who has been listening to them for years. Now, Nigerians can move through life with confidence, knowing their own digital village has their back,” he adds.
