Veteran stage and Nollywood actor, Lari Williams, is dead.
Film critic and journalist, Shaibu Husseini, announced the passage of the dramatist fondly called Uncle Lari Williams on Monday morning, in this Facebook post:
Uncle Lari Williams called me!
I had been in touch with Uncle Lari Williams from his base in Ikom. The last time we spoke on a contact he wanted me to make was just on February 24th. I promised to get a positive feedback to him this Monday February 28th and today I hear he is DEAD!! Kai!
My colleagues Adebayo and Rafiu Aderemi, would recall that Uncle Lari called me thrice as I was driving and I parked, returned the call and we spoke for about 30 minutes. The Uncle Lari I spoke to never sounded as though he would transit four days later.
We talked about everything around the arts and moviedom and he asked when I was going to update the piece I did on him in my book on the ‘Pioneers of Nollywood’. He wanted me to reflect the fact that his national award has been upgraded from Member of the Order of the Nigeria (MON) to Officer of the Order of the Nigeria (OON). He was awarded an MON by the time the book was published. He also wanted to do more writing and he mentioned how he called up an editor and sent three articles to him just last week that he wanted published. Wish I recorded our convo.
Been checking every part of my email to see if he kept his promise of forwarding the articles to me just for my attention. Will still be checking…
But it is well. I will still get the message across to the fellow you wanted me to reach out to. Good night, Legend. Good night, Uncle Lari “Babalari” Williams. Good night to the method actor and performance poet. Rest and worry NO MORE!!
