- Award-winning filmmaker and actress Funke Akindele has detailed her intense university struggles, revealing she took on multiple low-income jobs to survive her student years.
- The box-office queen shared a raw memory of being slapped by an unsatisfied customer while teaching herself how to fix nails along the corridors of her campus.
- Long before her cinematic breakthrough, Akindele worked behind the scenes as a location scout, cake vendor, and costume designer for early Nollywood veterans.
Nollywood powerhouse and multiple award-winning producer Funke Akindele has taken a nostalgic trip down memory lane, sharing a detailed account of the various businesses and menial jobs she engaged in to finance her education during her undergraduate days at the University of Lagos (UNILAG).
Eko Hot Blog reports that the filmmaker noted that her current business firmness and famous resilience are direct products of the intense street-level survival lessons life threw at her during those formative years.
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In a candid, deeply personal interview, the “Aiyetoro Town” creator dismantled the glamorous perception surrounding her current status, describing herself fundamentally as a lifelong hustler.
Akindele recounted how she boldly ventured into the beauty industry on campus by self-teaching the art of nail manicuring simply by paying close attention to local artisans working in the bustling Yaba market neighborhood. She would buy raw materials, sit in her hostel corridor, and advertise her services to passing students.
However, the journey was far from smooth or glamorous. The box-office icon recalled a particularly humiliating and painful incident where a student client slapped her across the face because she was unhappy with the quality of the amateur nail work.
Rather than allowing the physical assault to break her spirit, Akindele used the experience to fuel her drive, expanding her income streams across the campus ecosystem to ensure she never ran out of basic survival funds.
Beyond fixing nails, Akindele operated a campus cake supply service, recalling that legendary Nigerian makeup artist Bimpe Onakoya was one of her regular clients back then, often trading professional facial makeovers for Akindele’s baked goods.
Driven by an insatiable hunger to break into the entertainment space, she also worked as a makeup artist, fabric customizer, and costume manager for early industry icons like Bukky Wright and Iyabo Ojo, personally commuting to Yaba to source clothes and manually ironing them to perfection.
The screen star further revealed that she found a lucrative niche as an early Nollywood location manager.
She would walk through various neighborhoods, knock on residential doors, and negotiate filming rights with homeowners.
If a production crew budget provided ₦100,000 for a property, Akindele would creatively pay the homeowner ₦70,000 and pocket the remaining ₦30,000 as her agency commission.
This deep-rooted, multifaceted background in production logistics laid the solid foundational brick for her eventual rise as Nigeria’s most commercially successful independent film producer.
