Popular songstress Tiwa Savage showed a side few ever see when she led a panel at Entertainment Week Africa on Wednesday, November 19, 2025.

The event, held at Eko Hotel and Suites, hosted some of Nigeria’s top female artistes, including Yemi Alade, Sasha P, Qing Madi, Teni, and Waje, who gathered to discuss the highs and lows of being a woman in the music industry.

The panel, themed ‘The Price of Being Her… Power and the Cost of Visibility in Music’, was moderated by Savage, who guided discussions on resilience, authenticity, and navigating the challenges of visibility in a competitive field.

In her opening remarks, she lamented the unseen struggles Nigerian female artistes face.

Savage said, “They say cost is what you give up gaining something of value. But what happens when that price is too high and the return is low? Every cost has an exchange: you give something, you gain something. But for the Nigerian female artiste, the mark is not always rewarding. What happens when being her means giving up sleep, safety, and sanity just to stand on a stage that doesn’t always give back? What happens when she gives her voice, her time, her heart, and in return gets silence instead of airplay, doubt instead of investment, harassment instead of support?”

She continued, “She gives talent and is told to tone it down. She gives creativity and is credited only when a man stands beside her. She tells her truth and is labelled a liar. She gives vulnerability and is sexualised. She gives her all and gets disrespected in boardrooms. She gives her genius and gets underpaid. She gives a body of work, and they ask for her body. She gives her vision and is told the industry isn’t ready for it. She gives excellence and gets excuses. She gives consistency and is sidelined by mediocrity with muscles. She gives decades of her life, and they ask, ‘Can she still stay relevant?”

Savage concluded with a reflection on female solidarity, saying, “This panel is powerful to me because it brings together some of the most influential women in music whom I admire, who inspire me, who challenge me, and who have supported and shaped this industry in ways the world doesn’t always see.”