It appears popular Nigerian actress, Funke Akindele has finally dumped the Yoruba film industry that brought her to the limelight.
The make-believe star, who first got the attention of Nollywood followers through a popular, but now rested soap, ‘I Need To Know’, got her breakthrough in the movie world when she acted in her self-produced flick, ‘Jenifa’, from where she later got her nickname, ‘Jenifa’.
Soon after the success made by the film, Funke Akindele became one of the hottest movie stars in Nigeria, and one of the most sought after. Many filmmakers came calling afterwards and this landed her several endorsement deals, including Glo, Vitafone, Jobberman and others.
First Weekly has however observed that lately, Funke Akindele has not been very active in the Yoruba movie industry, rather, she has been very busy on film sets in Enugu and Asaba, where Igbo producers roll out several flicks, where they speak English Language.
The actress now has several English speaking movies to her credit and she has also won awards courtesy of such films. What First Weekly has also observed is that many film producers use Funke Akindele in comic movies and use her as a clownish character.


It is not clear if Funke Akindele will still be very active in Yoruba films, though we learnt some Yoruba producers don’t have the financial strength to pay for her services. Unconfirmed reports said that most Yoruba producers want to offer the actress fees ranging from N100,000 to N200,000, which some say she has surpassed. We could not confirm what Asaba and Enugu based filmmakers pay Funke Akindele to get her on set, but what we observed is that the actress prefers to act Asaba movies instead of Yoruba movies because of the language barrier of the latter.