Photo: Funke Akindele — Wikimedia Commons
Nollywood filmmaker Funke Akindele has said an influencer rejected a paid offer to promote her 2024 film Everybody Loves Jenifa, ignoring her management even after she personally offered to pay.
Akindele shared the experience while speaking at a CANEX WKND panel in Lagos, in a clip that circulated on X on November 7 and was reported by Punch on November 8. She did not name the influencer.
According to her account, her management approached the influencer about creating promotional content for the film three to four times a week. The influencer's side declined — and when Akindele offered to pay for the promotion herself, she says she was ignored.
- The offer: paid promotional content, three to four posts a week, for Everybody Loves Jenifa
- Akindele says management was declined, and her own follow-up offer to pay was ignored
- Months later, she says, she read online claims that she had blocked someone over the matter
Why the story struck a chord
Everybody Loves Jenifa went on to become one of the biggest Nollywood cinema releases of its year, powered heavily by social-media-driven marketing. Akindele's account flips the usual influencer-marketing story: even the industry's biggest box-office name, offering paid work at the peak of a record-breaking run, can be turned down — and then, she says, misrepresented.
She told the panel she only discovered months later that the episode had been retold online as her blocking someone, a version she disputes.
What happens next
The influencer remains unnamed in Akindele's account, and NTN is not speculating about their identity. The clip continues to circulate as CANEX WKND 2026 — which ran in Lagos from November 5 to 8 with more than 14,000 registered participants — winds down its post-event coverage.
Credit: Punch, November 8, 2026; Daily Mirror Nigeria, November 9, 2026.
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