Veteran Nollywood actor Jide Kosoko has opened up about a painful financial setback after pouring more than N300 million into his historical cinema film Leko Esu Gbayi (also known as Eleko or Oba Esugbayi), only for the project to fail to recover its costs.
Speaking on the African A-List podcast, the 72-year-old producer and actor explained that the money was not purely his own. Supporters and investors contributed funds for the production, expecting returns rather than offering a simple gift.
“I spent over 300 million naira on my cinema film, Leko Esu Gbayi, not quite long ago. This is money that people contributed for me and I ended up in debt because the people that brought the money made an investment, not just a gift,” Kosoko said.
When the film hit cinemas earlier this year, the box office results fell short of what was needed to break even. The little revenue that came in was shared among those involved, leaving him unable to fully repay the contributors.
“When the film got to the cinema and all sorts of things happened, we didn’t earn back the money, and the little we earned was split too.”
He described the weight of the outcome in personal terms.
“As I am like this, if you hear of someone with debt that’s dancing, it’s me. Yes, it’s not really debt because we contributed, but the people I dragged into investing their money in the work without breaking even bothers me and I think about it a lot.”
Eleko (Oba Esugbayi) opened in Nigerian cinemas on March 20, 2026. It is a historical drama about Oba Esugbayi Eleko, the Lagos monarch who resisted British colonial rule. Produced under Kosoko’s banner and directed by Adebayo Tijani, Babatunde Kosoko and Tunde Olaoye, the film featured an ensemble cast that included Femi Branch, Sola Kosoko, Femi Adebayo, Yinka Quadri, Yemi Solade and Broda Shaggi. It grossed about N18.3 million in its opening weekend, a figure that, while respectable for some titles, fell well short of covering a production budget above N300 million.
The revelation comes months after Kosoko thanked his children and colleagues for helping promote the film. In the same African A-List conversation, he also spoke about managing diabetes since 1996 and other personal matters. The financial shortfall on Eleko adds a sober note to a project he had framed as a passion-driven effort to bring a significant chapter of Lagos history to the big screen.