Dunno, whether my following notes are still valid for newest openwrt, but anyway:
Having had similar issues like yours, I was setting user root; in nginx.conf
I replaced usual /etc/init.d/nginx with my private, simple one, to start nginx from rc.local
Not using uci for config of nginx, but nginx.conf, only.
In other words, to get rid of the openwrt-specials, but using the linux-like style.
To make shure, nginx runs as root, to allow me all kind of php exec's.
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