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Sunday 28 February 2016

Bassey Okon is dead!

Joseph Abiodun Babatunde Adu
One of the few surviving actors in popular old TV drama, The Village Headmaster, Joseph Adu, popularly known as Jab Adu, is dead. The veteran actor passed on in Abeokuta, Ogun State, on Sunday. A source close to his family confirmed the passage though he could not yet provide details of it.

Trained as a professional banker before settling as an actor, late Jab Adu had an illustrious career on stage, television and film.Apart from playing ‘Bassey Okon’ in ‘The Village Headmaster’, Adu was a film producer with credits including “Bisi, Daughter of the River” and “Adio Family”, a series he co-produced with NTA.

The Village Headmaster was arguably the longest running television series in Nigeria, if not Africa and was such a crowd puller that it was said that the tv drama was capable of abating the chaotic Lagos traffic whenever it was transmitted at its allotted hour on national television.
He was 83.
He started his adult life as a banker with the Central Bank of Nigeria. While with the apex bank, he squeezed out time to participate as an actor and writer in the popular Village Headmaster, in which he played the role of Bassey Okon, the doctor, dispenser and pharmacist of Oja village. 
A scene from the Village Headmaster series

The deceased was born in Calabar, Cross River State. Thus, it was  easy for him to play the role of an Efik speaking character in the junction town of Oja.
He left banking in 1970 and went into full time acting, writing and production.

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