I Respect And Look Up To Funke Akindele – Toyin Abraham

Nollywood actress, Toyin Abraham has come out to react to the alleged beef between her and Funke Akindele.

She recently shared her reaction via her social media page, and Nigerians have been reacting.

According to her, Funke Akindele is one of the few people in the Nigerian movie industry that she looks up to and respects and she even kneels down to greet her in public.

She added that people should stop reading meaning into everything they see on social media.

Her words, “She is my senior colleague and she is someone I respect a lot; so, I do not know what people are talking about, trust me. She is one of the few people I look up to. Sometimes, people do not understand that we are colleagues and not family. So, you cannot be talking to all your colleagues. We talk, we follow each other.”

“If I see her, I will kneel down and say, ‘Aunty Funke se wa okay?’. A lot of people do not understand that we are working in the same space; we do not have to be close friends. When we see ourselves we greet each other. Forget social media, trust me.”

WOW.

Nollywood is a sobriquet that originally referred to the Nigerian film industry. The origin of the term dates back to the early 2000s, traced to an article in The New York Times. Due to the history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition for the term, which has made it a subject to several controversies.

The origin of the term “Nollywood” remains unclear; Jonathan Haynes traced the earliest usage of the word to a 2002 article by Matt Steinglass in the New York Times, where it was used to describe Nigerian cinema.

Charles Igwe noted that Norimitsu Onishi also used the name in a September 2002 article he wrote for the New York Times. The term continues to be used in the media to refer to the Nigerian film industry, with its definition later assumed to be a portmanteau of the words “Nigeria” and “Hollywood”, the American major film hub.

Film-making in Nigeria is divided largely along regional, and marginally ethnic and religious lines. Thus, there are distinct film industries – each seeking to portray the concern of the particular section and ethnicity it represents. However, there is the English-language film industry which is a melting pot for filmmaking and filmmakers from most of the regional industries.