Toolz: Still Rising

When Tolulope Oniru fully returned to Nigeria years ago after a long sojourn abroad, little did she know that years later she would become a name most Nigerians would wake up to every day.

Her journey, which is a combination of sheer forcefulness and individual cleverness, has been deeply exciting, and she has since become one of Nigeria’s most adored radio and television presenters. In the last four years, she’s become a toast of most listeners of BEAT 99.9 FM, where she hosts The Midday Show with Toolz. She’s built a huge listenership base that has helped both presenter and station to rope a large audience in Lagos’ crowded radio market.

What Toolz brings on board, is a carefully honed air skill that is able to feed on listener taste and preference, to draw as many people as she can. It is a craft she’s mastered intuitively. That she was adjudged Radio Presenter of the Year 2010 at the Nigerian Broadcasters Awards, only a little over 20 months after she’d made her debut, speaks enough of her dexterity.

For most BEAT FM listeners, that Toolz slot is precious and something they look forward to every single day. And she has done a seamless job of delivering when it matters. Getting to be on radio at last was a dream come true; she auditioned and got selected as one of few presenters during the early days of BEAT FM, in 2009.

The station had just made an entry into what was a turbulent and hazy urban radio market, and needed a crop of young and smart presenters to exhume it from absolute obscurity to an overnight favourite. It turns out Toolz met what the station owners wanted, and in few days after making that bold step to audition, saw herself hosting her personal show. It’s been four years since she joined BEAT FM, and the achievements recorded are as enormous as she may have envisaged. Last year, she was voted Media Personality of the Year, at the Nigerian Entertainment Awards (NEA), an endorsement of how much of an industry heavyweight she’s become.

She is winner of several other awards, too. Toolz’s experience in media, working with MTV Europe Networks as well as the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group prepared her for the BEAT FM job; it was her first major shot at radio.

Today, she is seen as one of Nigeria’s finest if not the finest on-air female personality. Her success on radio has landed her several jobs including getting to sit on the Channel O Music Awards judging panel (2011 and 2012). She is also host of the popular web series The Juice – on Ndani TV.

Intelligent, smart and sexy to the core, Toolz is that ideal media personality most young Nigerian ladies aspire to be like. She has proven a good role model. Toolz is currently the host of GLO X Factor Africa, airing on free-to-air and pay-per-view television across Africa.