New Telegraph 
In 2025, the entertainment scene was driven by box office movie release, music albums, concert and various scandals. From new street slangs to various award recognitions, 2025 was sure entertaining. In no particular order, we shed light on and give accolades to those who made 2025 exciting across the entertainment industry.
Priscilla Ojo-Mkambala
Priscilla Ojo, now Priscilla Mkambala is the beloved daughter of Nollywood actress and producer, Iyabo Ojo. Making her name as a social media influencer and a trendsetter, Priscilla further heightened her leverage as a powerhouse in lifestyle, beauty, and fashion influence on social media in 2025.
2025 is incomplete without the mention of Priscilla, whose lavish wedding to Tanzanian singer Juma Jux remains the year’s biggest social media wedding.
Priscilla’s influence was recognised continentally when she was crowned Top Beauty Influencer at the 2025 African Golden Awards.
Her voice in fashion and lifestyle spaces helped shape consumer trends and opened doors to major brand partnerships. She also signed a number of brand ambassador deals and earned her little tot an endorsement, all in the course of the year.
Davido
In 2025, David Adeleke aka Davido released his fifth studio album, ‘5ive’ to highly anticipating fans that thronged streaming platforms to make the album one of the most streamed Nigerian projects of the year, with over 320 million streams on Spotify alone. With this, Davido’s unmistakable influence became obvious.
The success of the album overtook major contemporaries and confirmed his enduring commercial clout. The project earned a record-breaking opening day, having about 15 million global Spotify streams within 24 hours of its release.
Funke Akindele
In 2025, Funke Akindele further pushed herself to remain Nollywood’s most bankable creative force. Rising from her previous success, Akindele entered 2025 raking in millions of Naira and smiling to the bank.
All through the year, Akindele featured in some of the biggest Nollywood blockbusters and kept raking in awards for her success and record-breaking feats. She further consolidated her dominance with the movie, ‘Behind the Scenes’, which was released in December 2025.
The movie is already a massive opener with over N200m in its first weekend, making it the biggest opening of 2025 in Nollywood. Beyond acting, her influence showed in how her movies shaped conversations around women, class mobility, marriage, and modern Nigerian family life.
Omoni Oboli
A year after hosting her son’s wedding and welcoming her first grandchild, Nollywood star, Omoni Oboli, returned to make a statement on the Nigerian film scene. Shuttling between Canada and Nigeria, Oboli took a backseat from acting to focus on producing some of the big films that rocked 2025.
She focused on YouTube as the streaming platform and earned herself several success stripes. This year marked a significant boost in her visibility and influence within the industry, even as an established veteran, largely through her masterful maximisation of the Omoni Oboli TV YouTube channel.
By focusing more on production than acting, she released over 30 movies on the platform, regularly uploading new content and driving subscriber growth while amassing millions of views.
Her consistent strategy blending full-length films, teasers, trailers, and live premieres catapulted the channel to Nigeria’s number one spot.
Her creation, ‘Love in Every Word’, and its sequel, ‘Love in Every Word: The Wedding’ became viral sensations, with the original alone surpassing 30 million views, and becoming the most searched Nollywood movie of the year on Google.
The two romantic dramas explored love, culture and personal growth and created memes, and slangs like ‘Achalugo’ and ‘Odogwu.’
Asake
Asake began 2025 on a slow pact after he refused to sign another deal with Olamide’s YBNL after the expiry of his previous deal. Soon after, he was enmeshed in a family scandal after his father took ill and called him out for neglecting him.
Some of his managers also took swipes at him at different points but despite all these, Asake remained focused on making a deep and sustained impact in 2025. Soon, he became a feature in several international fashion events and featured on several records both locally and internationally.
With this feat, he remained consistent among the most streamed artistes on Nigerian Spotify and secured multiple albums inside the platform’s Top 10. His catalog enjoyed heavy rotation all year round and he kept performing at live shows and festivals.
Wizkid
For many of his fans and cult followers on social media, Ayodeji Balogun, aka Wizkid, reclaimed the top spot as Nigeria’s most-streamed artiste on Spotify in 2025. He reclaimed the spot without many seeing him coming.
He also topped the Spotify Wrapped list for Nigeria while his album, ‘Morayo,’ was named the moststreamed album of the year in Nigeria. Wizkid’s dominance extended beyond local borders. His album was also cited as among the moststreamed in Sub-Saharan Africa on Apple Music’s year-end chart.
It’s no doubt that in 2025, Wizkid collaborated with more artistes than he has done in previous years, hence, earning him more influence and dominance on the music space globally.
Burna Boy
Damini Ogulu, aka Burna Boy, continued in his trademark footsteps of cementing his heavyweight status on the music scene and creating fuss and scene in his private and celebrated lifestyle. His album ‘No Sign of Weakness’ surpassed 250 million streams on Spotify, making it one of the year’s top-performing Nigerian releases.
Burna Boy cemented his growth on the international scene as he was highlighted as Nigeria’s most-exported artiste globally, reflecting his strong international appeal and wide Diaspora reach.
As a Grammy-winning figure and global ambassador of afrobeats, his tours, festival appearances, and cross-continental collaborations kept him at the frontlines of African music.
However, as expected by many, Burna Boy grabbed the headlines in 2025 for some wrong reasons. Despite becoming a constant feature and appeal to the international audience, he punctured the growth when he embarrassed and sent a couple out of his show for sleeping, and in another space, kicking a fan trying to get a hug.
Hilda Baci
Chef and lifestyle influencer, Hilda Baci, had a good year-round in 2025 with loads of endorsement deals and another attempt at a Guinness World Record. The 2023 GWR holder returned in 2025 to dominate digital discourse with the world’s largest pot of jollof rice, cooking 8,780kg in Lagos and feeding over 20,000 people.
Her campaign for the feat trended across platforms, becoming one of the most discussed Ni- gerian social media topics of the year.
Announcing her new record some days after, the Guinness World Record wrote on X, “New record: Largest serving of Nigerian style jollof rice – 8,780 kg (19,356 lb 9 oz) achieved by Hilda Baci and Gino on Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria. She successfully emerged as the only Nigerian that has achieved a double GWR within the space of two years.
Peller Habeeb Hamzat aka Peller had a good year as a TikToker in Nigeria. Aside from the obvious fact that he had a breakthrough year on TikTok where he has over 13 million followers, he raked in so much funds and got featured on various gigs including films and cameo appearances in music videos.
His on and off relationship with another social media personality, Jarvis, also propped up his influence, especially when he proposed marriage.
Towards the end of 2025, Peller got himself in trouble for a viral video where he engaged in reckless driving and crashed his multimillion-naira car. Shortly before the crash, he had threatened to kill himself over his latest breakup with Jarvis.
Timini Egbuson
In 2025, Timini Egbuson came gun blazing and prepared to not only make a mark but leave his footprints on the sands of time in the year in focus.
He appeared in multiple cinema and streaming releases, and his performances consistently sparked debate and admiration. In February 2025, he donned the hat of a producer to release his own movie, ‘Reel Love’, on Valentine’s Day.
The move marked his debut as an executive producer, while also starring as the lead. The feat achieved a record-breaking box office success, grossing over N40m on its opening day, making it the second-highest Nollywood debut ever, and over N99m across the opening weekend. The film eventually surpassed N300m.
