How coincidence made her the first face to appear on Nigerian television.

Anike Agbaje-Williams was born in Abeokuta on 23 October 1936. Her father was of Egba heritage, but she had part of her school years in Lagos under the care of her guardian.

After completing secondary school education, she was hired by the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation at Ikoyi, Lagos, in 1955. One day, a colleague who usually did announcements or read small bits of information on the radio did not show up, and the current host then asked her to take his place. When the supervisor heard Agbaje-Williams’s voice, he was impressed, and then asked her to join the programmes department as a staff announcer.

When a television station was established at Ibadan, she was asked to interview and was subsequently given a job at the station. Agbaje-Williams was a pioneer staff of Western Nigeria Television, WNTV, which was the first television station in Nigeria. She was the first person to appear on television broadcasts in the country, and was the first female broadcaster of the station. She rose to become a producer and director of programmes at the television station before retiring in 1986.

Agbaje-Williams died in Ibadan on 26 February 2025, at the age of 88.