Funke Akindele: Many of us sound British, American… we forget we’re Nigerians

Funke Akindele, Nollywood actress, has advised Nigerians to embrace their accent and stop trying to imitate foreign accents.

Akindele says it’s out of place for a Nigerian who’s not born or based abroad to suddenly acquire British and American accents.

In a recent chat with Hip TV, she stressed the importance of being culture-compliant, and also noted that proper English can be spoken bereft of a foreign accent.

“A lot of us want to be western, you know. We want to sound like British, American and we forget our culture, we forget we are Nigerians, and that we have an accent. South Africans are very proud of their accent.

“We can speak proper English, go through the phonetics, pronounce properly, chew our consonants but I don’t believe in all these foreign accents when you are not born or based in the UK or America.”

Akindele, famous for her role in Jenifa’s Diary, recently got married to Abdul Rasheed Bello, Nigerian singer popularly known as JJC Skillz.

Phonetics-speaking actors not grounded

Speaking in a similar vein, Segun Arinze, a veteran actor, criticised new Nollywood actors for speaking in “pretentious phonetics”.

According to Arinze, many of the fresh faces in the movie industry lack discipline and are not well grounded.

“Today’s set of Nollywood actors are not grounded. What they know how to do is to speak phonetics. Most of these guys are pretentious. They are only interested in who has the highest number of likes or followers on their social media platforms.

“Most of them are not even disciplined and they lack the knowledge; they only want to be popular.

“I am sorry to say this but the truth is that today’s crop of Nollywood actors are not grounded. Talent is not the only thing you need; you also have to be grounded”, he added.