In an exclusive interview with BBC Pidgin, well-known actress Tonto Dikeh, who is vying for the office of deputy governor in her home area, Rivers State, in the 2023 elections, said it was not easy to go from being a celebrity to a politician.<\/p>\n
Several entertainers have recently announced they were running for political office in the forthcoming elections, including Funke Akindele, a Nollywood actress and Banky W, a musician and actor.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst of all I would like to commend all of them, it\u2019s not easy to be where they are, it\u2019s not easy to put yourself out there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say congratulations for coming this far,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n
Dikeh, 37, said her desire to enter politics was born out of a belief that the younger generation of Nigerians must lead on the change they want to see.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe youths are now understanding their value, they are now understanding that if we don\u2019t speak out, things won\u2019t change. Nobody wants to be quiet any more, nobody wants to suffer any more. That has propelled a lot of well-meaning youths.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also said people should not expect her to act in films anytime soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have done a couple of films over the years, like two films in 10 years so you can\u2019t really say I am still in the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added that if she got into power she would like to support the acting industry, but she \u201cwon\u2019t act any more\u201d.<\/p>\n
Dikeh has starred in dozens of films and has also veered into music.<\/p>\n
source:bbc<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In an exclusive interview with BBC Pidgin, well-known actress Tonto Dikeh, who is vying for the office of deputy governor in her home area, Rivers State, in the 2023 elections, said it was not easy to go from being a celebrity to a politician. Several entertainers have recently announced they were running for political office […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":25014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[10618,1448,4386,2735,7599,11493,3874,5058,12692,10543,5424,2440,594],"class_list":["post-25013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-actor","tag-actress","tag-banky-w","tag-bbc","tag-celebrity","tag-interview","tag-lead","tag-music","tag-musician","tag-nigerians","tag-politics","tag-tonto-dikeh","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}