Jimi Solanke’s passing at 81 marks lights out in the halls of masterful storytelling
In the minds of the eighties and nineties kids is a bond with Uncle Jimi Solanke’s morally-charged Storyland series which ran for seven years on the National Television Authority to the delight of a family audience.
He is regarded as a master storyteller, Chief Jimi Solanke, making memorable childhood capsules that nostalgic millennials can visit but sadly that light of creativity will no longer burn in the physical form following the death of the dramatist on Monday, 5 February 2024.
The University of Ibadan-bred reportedly died at the Babcock University Teaching Hospital, Ilisan in Ogun State.
Reports say that the deceased was transported to the teaching hospital from his nearby Remo residence.
Chief Solanke who died when he was just 81 years old back in the sixties, gained prominence for his exceptional film acting which he held as a spell throughout his career. This is perhaps one of the reasons he will be missed.
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Remo North State Constituency representative Hon Dickson Awolaja has confirmed the reports about the unexpected passing of Chief Solanke. He shared with Punch News that his death is no doubt another big loss to us in Remo North and Ogun State as a whole given his worthy contributions to the development of our dear nation.
And truly indeed, Pa Jimi Solanke did make noteworthy contributions in Nigeria. After graduating from the University of Ibadan’s School of Drama, he took up a creativity stint in the United States where he founded a performing group known as The Africa Review which bore reference to his Yoruba origins through their appearance and presentation.
Several remarkable achievements can be tied to the late playwright Jimi Solanke, but there is one that stands out. In the minds of the eighties and nineties kids in particular is a bond with Uncle Jimi Solanke’s moral-charged Storyland series which ran for seven years on the National Television Authority (NTA).
In Storyland, millennials learned about the journey of goodness through the actions of fictional characters and animals and that sort of raised the profile of NTA at the time.
Part of Jimi Solanke’s work includes wrapping up the 20th century as the ghost in the 1997 epic picture, Sango and then much later on in the current century, a fatherly role in the political drama Shadow Parties which showed on Netflix.
Ayodelé is a Lagos-based journalist and the Content and Editorial Coordinator at Meiza. All around the megacity, I am steering diverse lifestyle magazine audiences with ingenious hacks and insights that spur fast, informed decisions in their busy lives.
