Stephanie Coker Shares Her Experience of Being Mistreated at Cool FM

Podcast host Stephanie Coker-Aderinokun recently shared her challenging experience working as a radio presenter at Cool FM shortly after returning to Nigeria from the UK. In an interview with Chude Jideonwo, she described her initial encounter with the company, where her audition tape was discarded by someone who felt threatened by her British accent. Despite this setback, she eventually secured a job at Cool FM, only to discover that the environment was hostile.

Stephanie recounted how, upon submitting her audition tape, she was told it was never received. “I went to Cool FM to audition. And I dropped my audition tape I recorded. Nobody got back to me. They said they didn’t get anything. So they were like, ‘Come back for another audition. Don’t drop a tape, audition,’” she explained. When she returned for a second audition, she learned that her original tape had been intentionally thrown away. “Cut the long story short, somebody threw my audition away at Cool FM, because they felt like ‘This British accent is coming here? No, no, no.’ They felt threatened. Eventually, I got a job at Cool FM and the person actually told me that they threw my audition away. And I was like ‘Okay,’” she added.

During her time at Cool FM, she faced widespread unkindness from her colleagues, with the exception of former radio presenter Kaylah Oniwo, who was the only person who treated her kindly. “By the way, everybody was mean to me there. I think it was only Kaylah that was nice,” she said.

Additionally, Stephanie was the target of malicious rumors suggesting she had secured her job through sexual favors with the boss. These false accusations caused her significant distress. “I will cry going to work and cry coming back because they were like ‘Ooh she’s sleeping with the boss. That’s how she got this job.’ Everybody was just like ‘She did something dodgy to get here,’” she recalled.

The final straw came when she was asked to write an apology letter for sitting at Beat FM’s table during an event, an incident reported to their bosses by a colleague. This incident prompted her to leave the company.