At first when Niniola Apata better known by her stage name Niniola stormed the entertainment scene she sounded somehow too alone with her kind of flow, and looked like one trying to appeal to the audience into showing her some sort of pity by accepting her kind of genre. It was as if the audience snubbed her. In fact, not as if, they snubbed her. Don’t rush into blaming the audience for such an act. They were already used to the contemporary flow of Davido, Olamide, Tiwa Salvage and Wizkid and you just want to change everything overnight not even with sounds fans consider contemporary enough, but sounds in between —boring and fascinating— sounding like one discovered from a remote place in Africa. We thought when she sees no one attending to her kind of flow she would leave the scene on her own with nobody telling her, or change her flow with what will suit the audience.

However, despite all the anxiety we inflicted on her she was able to soak all of them and moved on. She’s the bravest of all Nigeria’s female artistes. Many of Nigeria’s female ex- artistes have not even received half of the humiliation her songs received before they fell out; while some immediately had to change their flow into what the audience wants, but she did otherwise, she kept to her flow, though with tremendous improvement.

She finally gained her effort with the release of “Maradona”. The song went places, even as far as to Argentina — the home soil of Diego Maradona. The song gradually ranked high on many Nigeria’s radio top ten charts, and was consistently banged on stereo to the pleasure of the listening audience. Now she has another track she titled “Sicker”, and it is already making wave. Our question now is what then would stop her from being nominated for this year Headies Next Rated? She has perhaps worked harder than any other Nigerian artiste this year, and the least she should get is at least a nomination for the Next Rated at the Headies 2017 if her credentials, aside from her obvious dope songs, still qualify her for this category.