This February we had Nollywood actor, Daniel Etim Effiong, as our guest speaker at the monthly career webinar. He spoke on living his Nollywood dreams and how he transitioned from Chemical Engineering to being an actor.
During his presentation, he nudged our students to wake up to the reality of their dreams. He said, “Everyone has dreams but what would be your distinguishing factor is waking up to the reality of that dream and taking bold steps to achieve them.”
He added that it is also paramount that our students fan the flame of their passion by reading up, educating themselves, practising real skills, and following those with similar passion to push them towards their dreams.
Daniel Etim Effiong started developing inclinations to acting and film production at a young age. He remarked that he was a good storyteller as a kid and would narrate stories he made up to his friends. Incidentally, he told his parents he wanted to quit his course in Engineering to start afresh with a course in filmmaking. However, he was advised to complete his course before taking a decision.
Eventually, he made his decision to venture into acting after he quit working in an oil & gas company. He got a job as a Content Producer for Ndani Television. After working at Ndani Television for a few years, his passion led him to pursue an education in the Motion Picture Medium at AFDA Johannesburg, where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Motion Picture Arts and later took a course at the University of Johannesburg in autoethnography and back to Nigeria to face the Nollywood industry full-time.