Why I Changed My Name from ‘Aimakhu’ to ‘Abraham’ – Toyin Abraham Ajeyemi

Toyin Abraham

Nigerian actress Toyin Abraham Ajeyemi is having a wonderful year and enjoying a fantastic time in her career right now. Toyin Abraham is cashing out, and is cashing out big! The actress has come a long way since being solely an actress acting in Yoruba movies, to being one of the most bankable movie actresses and producers here in Nigeria.

During an interview with The Will Downtown, Toyin Abraham opened up about the changes that have come to her life, and how all of these changes started right from the time when she decided to change her name from Aimakhu to Abraham. Here is what Toyin Abraham said.

Speaking first about how things have changed financially for her, Toyin Abraham said:

TOYIN ABRAHAM: When I started working with FilmOne, was when I understood what royalties meant. Back then, there was nothing you could do about it with our marketers in the Yoruba industry. You act in a movie, give it to them, and they sell it in Idumota. I didn’t even know they were making money from YouTube. And when the movie comes out, they can give you between fifty to two hundred and fifty thousand naira, that was it. It was FilmOne that explained it to me. So even when I hear people saying FilmOne this and that, I’m like, when I was naive, these people opened my eyes to many things. Fine, we fight sometimes. That’s normal. I can leave the group chat five times in one month, but they laugh it off and are still there for me. When they asked me how I get paid for my movies, and I told them that I often hand it over to the marketer for a one-time fee, they introduced me to royalties and assured me that I would ‘eat it’ till I die. And it’s true. I’m still eating. I normally do five to seven million naira per feature, but there is no way you don’t consider relationships even in business. But I will put the average at five million naira.

Then, speaking about why she changed her name from ‘Aimakhu’ to ‘Abraham’, Toyin Abraham said:

TOYIN ABRAHAM: My dad’s family name is Aimakhu, short for Aimakhume, which means ‘you are just chasing me for nothing.’ People told us to change it a very long time ago, but I didn’t listen because I had started acting with it. All my sisters were married then, so they had already changed it to their husbands’ last names. The only son we have in our family changed his name to David Abraham. One day, a vision came; a pastor from CAC (Christ Apostolic Church) told my mum to tell me to change the name. The pastor said the name is not good as it will make people beef with me for no reason. And that was something that used to happen a lot. My life changed.