Baba Feyikogbon Dies At 80

Nollywood actor, Chief Sunday Akanbi Akinola a.k.a Baba Feyikogbon has died at the age of 80. Recall that the thespian hit the limelight in the 1980s and 1990s with his popular weekly sitcom, the Feyikogbon series, which aired on NTA Channel 7 Lagos for over 13 years.

The movie star, who was born on September 19, 1942 suffered kidney failure for years and sought help from the public in 2019.

At the time, he said he needed 30 million naira to travel abroad to treat kidney failure and hypertension, but he has now passed on.

R.I.P.

Nollywood is a sobriquet that originally referred to the Nigerian film industry. The origin of the term dates back to the early 2000s, traced to an article in The New York Times. Due to the history of evolving meanings and contexts, there is no clear or agreed-upon definition for the term, which has made it a subject to several controversies.

The origin of the term “Nollywood” remains unclear; Jonathan Haynes traced the earliest usage of the word to a 2002 article by Matt Steinglass in the New York Times, where it was used to describe Nigerian cinema.

Charles Igwe noted that Norimitsu Onishi also used the name in a September 2002 article he wrote for the New York Times. The term continues to be used in the media to refer to the Nigerian film industry, with its definition later assumed to be a portmanteau of the words “Nigeria” and “Hollywood”, the American major film hub.

Film-making in Nigeria is divided largely along regional, and marginally ethnic and religious lines. Thus, there are distinct film industries – each seeking to portray the concern of the particular section and ethnicity it represents. However, there is the English-language film industry which is a melting pot for filmmaking and filmmakers from most of the regional industries.