Hakeem Onilogbo popularly known as Hakeem Effect is an award-winning makeup and special effects artiste in Nigeria’s movie industry.
Known for creating illusions and close-to-reality effects, Hakeem spoke to Punch Newspaper on his talent and how his own creations sometimes scare him at nights.
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“Sometimes, after I have built a body prosthetic, and I wake up in the middle of the night to do something, I usually forget I was the one that built the body, so I get scared a little bit. When such occurrences take place, I just calm myself down.”
Interestingly, my children are already used to my works, so even sometimes, when they see a real incident similar to some of my effects, they call my attention to it. I always tell them that every scary thing they see on the road is not a special effect. Nothing can scare my children; they are used to seeing blood and horrible things because I create some of my effects at home.“
When I was a child, I had it in mind that I would be a great actor; I never knew I would go into special effects at all. I ventured into the movie industry 12 years ago and I started as an actor. But I can’t act again; I can only go into movie production. However, man proposes, but God disposes.
“Interestingly, I learnt this art in dreams; I didn’t have any form of training to acquire this skill. I started improving the skill as time went on. I was 28 years old when I used to have the dreams; I always tell people that they shouldn’t try to compete with anyone in life.
“I used to paint as a child, my parents are very proud of me. I am the only one (out of my parents’ children) that didn’t have the opportunity to attend a university, but despite that, everything still turned out well.
“Every job has its own challenges; most of my jobs that impress people are the jobs I have experimented with on my own before using them for movies. I experiment a lot. My most memorable effect would be transforming some people into President Muhammadu Buhari and Nelson Mandela. I’ll never forget these works because it is not easy to replicate someone,”