‘Village Headmaster’ icon, ‘Bassey Okon’ dies at 83

Veteran actor and dramatist, Joseph Abiodun Babatunde Adu, (popularly known as Jab Adu) has died at the age of 83.
The actor, a known face on the defunct ‘Village Headmaster’ television drama series on the Nigerian Television Authority, NTA , who played the part of ‘Bassey Okon’ passed on in his Abeokuta, Ogun State home early Sunday morning.
Trained as a professional banker before settling for acting, the late Jab Adu had an illustrious career on stage, television and film.
An abridged version of the biography of the deceased written by Adegboyega Arulogun stated that Jab Adu started his adult life as a banker with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
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.
The deceased was born in Calabar, Cross River State, and was easy for him to play the role of an Efik in the junction town of Oja.
He left banking in 1970 and went into full acting, writing and production.
He was more renowned in acting but his creative pedigree transcended not just acting that he was very well known for on the screen.
He was a film producer whose production credits include “Bisi, Daughter of the River” and “Adio’s Family”, a series he co-produced with NTA.
Jab Adu wrote, co-produced and directed the full length film — ‘Bisi, Daughter of the River’, a film that was one of the pioneering efforts that followed “Kongi’s Harvest” and “Things Fall Apart.”
Based upon the Yoruba legend of Olurombi and shot on 35min on celluloid on location both in Lagos and Badagry, the film threw a challenge to the American and Indian films in the Nigerian cinema circuit because of its production quality and Nigerians’ thirst to see their own people on the cinema screens in the theatres.
Bisi, Daughter of the River had a success story in the cinema theatres.
One of the lessons of Bisi was that like ‘Kongi’s Harvest’ and ‘Things Fall Apart’, the crew was both Nigerian and foreign film technicians — an avenue for learning by the local crew members.
Jab Adu, while alive, was a devotee of Grail Message Movement.