There is something quietly powerful about a woman who has figured out that social media cannot actually hurt her unless she lets it.
Tolu Oniru, better known as Toolz, opened up in a recent podcast interview with Ifedayo Agoro about navigating public life, online criticism, financial independence and marriage, and she did not hold back on any of it.
On social media pile-ons, she was refreshingly matter of fact.
“If you have been dragged several times and you wake up each morning and notice that you didn’t die after all, then your perspective changes. Sometimes I drop a tweet and go about my daily activities, and when I log back in, I see a lot of mentions. It depends on my mood. Sometimes I respond, sometimes I ignore. By the next day, attention has moved on to someone else.”
That is not indifference. That is someone who has genuinely done the work of not tying her sense of self to what strangers think of her on a given afternoon.
What makes Toolz’s story particularly interesting is the context behind her drive. She is the daughter of the late Oba Idowu Abiodun Oniru, a respected traditional ruler in Lagos, which places her firmly within Nigerian royalty. But she was clear that a privileged last name never felt like a financial plan.
“My father had over 20 kids, so I needed a job for myself. I started working when I was 15, at an Italian restaurant. I was washing dishes. I did that because I wanted to earn for myself. I have always strived to be independent,” she said.
There is something worth sitting with in that image. A teenager from the Oniru royal family was washing dishes at an Italian restaurant because she understood early that identity and income are two different things, and she wanted control over both.
Now a household name, talk show host and mother of two, Toolz also had pointed words on marriage and the pressure that surrounds it.
“Marriage is not easy at all. Don’t rush into it. Do things at your pace. If you make the mistake of marrying wrongly, those pressuring you won’t be there.”
It is the kind of advice that only lands properly when it comes from someone who has actually lived enough to mean it.
