Ghanaian TV host Ria Abdul told Chude that she left a major show on Ghana’s Metro TV because she believed her talent was not fully recognised in her home country. She said she was only given a two‑hour playlist show and felt heavily undermined despite knowing she had much more to offer.
She explained that her late father was Ghanaian but naturalised in Nigeria, and that her mother always told her stories of him living in “Alata”, the Ghanaian nickname for Nigeria. She said this made her grow up loving Nigeria and seeing it as the biggest stage for entertainment in Africa.
Ria said she woke up one morning, studied the Instagram pages of top Nigerian presenters, and decided that if they could succeed here, she could do it too, so she moved to Lagos to “dominate” and build a continental career.
Ria Abdul said: “I knew that I was too talented for Ghana. I felt like I was being undermined there. I was just doing playlist, a two‑hour show, but it wasn’t giving me the recognition I needed. Nigeria is like the New York. I said, if I blow in Nigeria, then I have blown everywhere. I went through the Instagram pages of some of the big presenters here and I said, if these people can do it, I can do it. They call me small but mighty. Why don’t I go and dominate?”