Olu Jacobs, actor who helped build Nollywood into a global industry, dies at 84

Olu Jacobs, the RADA-trained actor whose move from British stage and television back to Lagos in the early 1990s helped give Nigeria's film industry its first taste of international polish, has died at 84. His son, Olusoji Jacobs, announced the death in a statement carried by the News Agency of Nigeria, describing his father as "the Lion of Lufodo" and asking bloggers to respect the family's privacy.

Jacobs died on September 16, 2026, capping a career that ran from British repertory theatre in the 1970s to more than a hundred Nigerian film and television productions. His wife of nearly four decades, the actress Joke Silva, had disclosed in an earlier interview that he was living with Lewy body dementia, a progressive neurological condition, though the family's own statement did not cite a specific cause of death.

A career measured in decades and roles

The numbers behind Jacobs' career are, by Nollywood standards, without precedent among his generation. He trained at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in the early 1970s and spent nearly two decades working in British theatre, television and film before relocating to Nigeria around 1990. In the years since, he built a Nigerian filmography that different biographical accounts put at well over one hundred productions, and which Lufodo Group's own materials describe as exceeding 300, on top of earlier international credits including "The Dogs of War," Roman Polanski's "Pirates" and "Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend." His later Nigerian work included "Dry," "Oloibiri" and "The Royal Hibiscus Hotel," roles that carried him from the video-shop era of Nollywood's founding into the streaming age, as platforms including Netflix and Amazon Prime Video began commissioning Nigerian films and series in the 2020s.

• 84 years old at the time of death; born July 11, 1942
• More than 50 years as a working actor across British and Nigerian stage, television and film
• Winner of the 2007 Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Actor and a joint 2016 AMAA Lifetime Achievement Award with Joke Silva
• Named a Member of the Order of the Federal Republic, Nigeria's national honor, in 2011

From the BBC to the "godfather of Nollywood"

Jacobs' path to Nigerian screens ran through some of British television's most recognizable shows of the 1970s, including "The Goodies," "Till Death Us Do Part" and "The Professionals," roles that gave him a grounding in camera technique and episodic performance rarely available to actors in Nigeria at the time. When he returned home around 1990 and began appearing in Nigerian Television Authority productions such as the detective series "The Third Eye," he brought with him a level of discipline — rehearsal, voice work, character construction — rarely seen in the young home-video industry at the time. The Nigerian newspaper Vanguard has described Jacobs, alongside actor Pete Edochie, as one of the "godfathers of Nollywood" for that reason, crediting the pair with helping the industry grow into the commercial and cultural force it became across West Africa and its diaspora.

In 2012, Jacobs and Silva formalized that mentoring instinct by co-founding the Lufodo Group, an umbrella for a production company and the Lufodo Academy of Performing Arts in Lagos, which trains actors, directors and technicians and in 2022 took over management of the historic Glover Memorial Hall from the Lagos state government. It is that institution the family referenced in calling him "the Lion of Lufodo."

That handoff matters to an industry that has changed shape since Jacobs first returned to it. Nollywood today releases thousands of titles a year, feeds a diaspora audience across Europe and North America, and has become a recruiting ground for global streamers looking for African content — a trajectory that Nigerian critics and the guild itself have repeatedly tied back to the credibility Jacobs and a handful of stage-trained contemporaries brought to the medium in its earliest, most improvisational years.

An industry, and a national honors system, take stock

The tributes that followed came from both the industry Jacobs helped build and the state that had honored him. The Lagos chapter of the Actors Guild of Nigeria credited him with contributions "beyond his performances to mentorship, institution building and the development of professional structures," while President Bola Tinubu's office issued a formal condolence through the state broadcaster Voice of Nigeria, and Lagos Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu separately called him one of Nollywood's "respected fathers."

"Uncle Olu Jacobs was far more than an actor; he was an institution. Many people who came after him walked more boldly because they witnessed his excellence. Though the curtain has fallen on the legend, the light he ignited will never go out." — Abubakar Yakubu, National President, Actors Guild of Nigeria

President Tinubu's statement, relayed by his spokesperson, called Jacobs "a giant of the Nigerian creative industry" whose passing was "a great loss to Nigeria, the African film industry and the global community of lovers of the performing arts." The reaction reflects how far the actor's standing had traveled beyond entertainment pages: the Actors Guild of Nigeria alone counts more than a million registered members across the country's 36 states, an industry that traces its professional foundations back to performers of Jacobs' generation.

What happens next

The family has not yet announced funeral arrangements, and it remains unclear whether a state or industry memorial will be organized separately from a private burial, a distinction that has mattered in past Nollywood deaths given the guild's size and reach across all 36 Nigerian states. Colleagues including Funke Akindele, Ini Edo and Emeka Ike have continued posting tributes since the announcement, and retrospectives of his career are already circulating across Nigerian outlets. For Lufodo Academy, the more immediate question is institutional: whether the school Jacobs helped build can carry his training philosophy forward without the man Nollywood had, for three decades, simply called one of its godfathers.