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| Venita Akpofure. |
With Venita Akpofure, life is a fun-filled adventure. It is about searching until you locate your passion.
A graduate of Accounting from Kingston and Hertfordshire University, United Kingdom, she remembers her trip to Nigeria from London. It was meant to last seven days but it stretched into a year! A professional model, television personality, an all-round entertainer, who dances, acts and anchors programmes, she discovered Nigeria to be a land of opportunities.
“After my degree in accounting and finance, I went further to study fashion and marketing, and when I was done, I took a trip down to Nigeria. As soon as I got here, I decided that this was where I wanted to be,” she says.
“Back in the UK, my job was on a management team at a flagship store in central London, where I managed a team of about 15 people. I was in charge of retail operations, customer service and human resources. I worked more than 40 hours a week as head of loss and prevention for a luxury shoe brand. It was fun but I believe in following my dreams and doing something I love; I met something I love when I came to Nigeria on that short trip. I am happier working here because this is home, and I feel I can make more impact here in areas like entertainment and media, which are just evolving. The UK entertainment industry is pretty saturated; they have seen all kinds of things, and done different things; so it is harder to make an impact there.
“I did not work full time in UK as I am doing in Nigeria currently because I was always studying or working in a job that had a guarantee like an income. This is a land of opportunities; I don’t think anybody can make it better anywhere else.”
Currently labelled the latest vixen by entertainment television viewers, Venita, who has featured in several music videos for D’banj, Banky W, Ice Prince, TY Bello as well as- Skales’ Mukulu, 2face’s Ihe Neme and Timaya’s Bum Bum, among many others, is first among four kids born to a UK-based businessman from the famous Akpofure family.
She reels out the credits:
“We have a very big family. My father is probably one of over 20 children of his parents, I know my grandfather was a SAN; my father’s eldest brother is a SAN. My father is not fully Nigerian but he is half English, half Nigerian of the Akpofure Kokori family.”
Now 25, Akpofure who left Nigeria when she was just nine years old, says working in Nigeria as a TV personality for the past one year has been an experience of sorts. Hear her:
“I have learnt some of the greatest lessons in life; you always learn a lot when you come from somewhere you are used to somewhere you are not. I had to adapt quickly and in this environment, only the strongest survives. I have learnt things that I will hold unto for the rest of my life and I am grateful for that. I don’t know about other people, but I see the Nigerian entertainment industry as a very viable one. If you work very hard enough to be at the top of your game, you can demand to be paid your own price. At a certain price, you have a standard because they know you deliver a certain standard of work. These are the people making a lot of money.”
With an erratic schedule that consists of hosting live shows, TV shows, acting, dancing and modelling, how does she relax?
She replies: “I sit at home, relax and watch TV with my girlfriends. I like being around people who are positive and people who don’t really care about what I do. I don’t really know many people here; so my unit is pretty secure. A lot of things revolve around going to events.”
Asked to describe herself and she says, “I am a seasoned individual and I have had life experiences in different parts of the world. I have travelled to Spain, Germany and there is no where I have not been to apart from Egypt. I am very understanding and I am quite ambitious. I am a softie but protective of those I care about.”
Pretty and with an enviable height, is there no particular gentleman in her life?
“I know a guy will catch me one day, that is, if he has not done so already,” she says chuckling.
“I am not married and I don’t have children; so I don’t have anything tying me down from achieving what I want to achieve. That is my primary goal. Anything that comes with it is a bonus, but I know that I am going to end up somewhere in a comfortable position in my relationship.”
What kind of man will excite her? A Nigerian? European?
“I can’t say, but as a Nigerian woman, I know that I want to transfer our traditional values to my children. This would be impossible with somebody who is not a Nigerian. But I am open-minded; anything can happen to anyone at anytime, even if the person is not a Nigerian. I have a big thing about being successful as a mother, a woman and a wife. I don’t aspire to be well known, but I aspire to be respected for being good at what I do.”
What does style mean to her?
Venita replies, “Style is an individual interpretation. I have to go every other event and have my face painted and be dramatic all the time. That does not ginger me anymore. It also depends on my mood; I may want to get dressed in tattered jeans and baggy top. I like being confident with what I am wearing. Style is what you make of it.”
Not many women have a beautiful skin like hers. She says with just a wash before bed, some regular vitamins and once-in-a-while facial, she is good to go. “My immune system has to be at its peak for somebody who is up and doing all the time. Also, I have body scrub at home once every two weeks.”
Neither is she a contact lenses freak. “When I was younger, I had my contact on for a bit too long, and I ended up in the hospital! I had to be on an intravenous which caused my eyes to be opened for 48 hours! It was the most exhausting, painful thing I have ever done in my life and I have done a lot of painful things including going up a snowy mountain. My life is an adventure,” she concludes
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