Olu Jacobs with wife, Joke
By Tony Adibe
As fans and well-wishers of the popular veteran film actor, Olu Jacobs wish him happy birthday celebration today, July 12, 2026, courtesy of his very dear wife, actress and film producer/writer, Joke Silva, who decided to celebrate the husband, I happily join their fans globally to wish him well but also to recount an encounter when I ‘nearly killed’ the popular film guru, according to Joke.
It was sometime in March 1997, and as a young reporter with Daily Times, Agidimgbi, Lagos, precisely on the Sunday Times desk, I had gone to the Muson Centre, Onikan, Lagos, to cover a play “Digging For Gold.” It is a Nigerian adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband”. The adaptation was written and produced by Joke Silva, where Olu Jacobs played a lead role, while his vivacious wife, Joke, was also among the key cast.
I had arrived at the venue earlier and was staying around the open space downstairs (the lounge, or is it forebah) when the renowned actor, Jacobs, and his wife Joke walked in. The wife first sighted me, and I went to exchange pleasantries with them.
“Oh, Tony, you came to cover the play?” she asked with a smile, and I replied in the affirmative. I had wanted to salute Uncle Jacobs, but he literally made ‘eyes right’ and walked away. “Uncle Olu, you are taking this thing too far. Tony is greeting you, and you are not responding,” Joke said, and pleaded with the husband to at least say ‘hello’ to me. “Hello, Tony, how are you?” The famous actor made a quick U-turn and said reluctantly to me as he had a very snappy handshake with me while he avoided my eyes – he looked the other way. He was unhappy with me, but I didn’t know the reason. “Tony was just doing his job as a journalist,” Joke told her husband politely as he walked away.
“Tony, you nearly killed my husband,” Joke said in what sounded like a whisper. I was dumbfounded. “When our vendor brought the Sunday Times where you published ‘Olu Jacobs weeps for daughter,’ he collected the newspaper and went upstairs, wailing and lamenting loudly. Tony, you nearly killed my husband,” Joke repeated softly. I apologized to her but quickly added that I never knew that the report would have such an impact on him. “People who didn’t know that we lost our only daughter began to call us after reading your report,” she said.
Now it’s been about 30 years since those encounters, and, for the purpose of refreshing memories, and against all odds, I hereby republish the story that Uncle Jacobs, apparently, felt should have been killed. I was searching for another material in my small library and eventually ‘stumbled’ on this old Sunday Times edition.
Olu Jacobs Weeps For Daughter SUNDAY TIMES March 16, 1997, p.8
“It could as well have been a well-acted tragic scene in a play, but famous film actor, Mr. Olu Jacobs, was not on stage last week when he wept bitterly for his only daughter, who passed on late last year.
The setting was the Ikeja residence of the Jacobs, and prompting the traumatic event was a question about how the family was coping with the loss. As he shrugged his shoulders and made to answer the question, his face took on a sad colour. Unable to hold on any longer, he wept inconsolably, in the process bending over the big table inside his parlour.
It took Joke quite some time to calm the renowned actor whose broad shoulders heaved as he sobbed for his ten-year-old departed daughter, Dayo.
“Sweetheart, don’t cry. Olu, stop crying,” the wife pleaded passionately as she quickly dropped her cigarette in the ashtray and gently held the weeping actor. “It’s alright. It’s alright, Olu. Stop crying, darling,” she implored emotionally and suddenly burst into tears herself.
A few minutes later, Jacobs, who played the lead role in the popular television play “Third Eye”, raised his head from the table and with his left palm, slowly wiped the tears from his eyes. To steady himself, he lit a cigarette and recounted how he lost the girl.
“My daughter, Dayo, was a very bubbly child. She was bow-legged when she was born. But as she was growing, one of the legs stretched while the other did not,” Jacobs recalled emotionally.
According to him, the condition of Dayo’s legs affected her not only psychologically but physically. “She was feeling the pains as a young girl and didn’t want the leg to remain like that,” he said. Moreover, the parents were equally bothered: “Even we, the parents, felt that the leg might affect her during childbirth,” Jacobs said.
To correct the problem, Jacos and his wife, Joke, went to town in search of medical specialists who could correct the faulty leg through a medical operation.
Jacobs would not name the specialist eventually found, but on the day she was taken into the operating theatre, the doctors said the operation would last two hours. “So, we waited until the operation was all over. But after a long time, the doctors told us that Dayo convulsed after the operation, and they decided to put her in such a way that she wouldn’t damage the operation site. After that, we never saw Dayo conscious again,” he said, gesturing systematically.
So how did they take the shock of losing the young girl to what was supposed to be a minor surgery? Though the actor could not explain his feelings, he remarked that “it’s like any other shock,” wondering why the tragedy happened to his family. “Why did it happen like that?”, he asked soberly.
Explaining further, he declared, “We knew that the doctors were specialists and had performed similar operations in the past successfully.” And as consolation, he added: “As I said before, God gives, God takes. The priest said we (parents) are mere caretakers, and some of these happenings, we can’t understand because our hearts are heavy with sorrow and grief.”
According to him, his daughter’s death is bringing the family nearer to God. “The shock itself has strengthened our trust in God,” he said philosophically, noting that “because we now see that we as human beings are helpless. When we go to bed at night, we don’t know whether we are going to wake up or not. Human beings are really helpless in a situation like this.”
But how is Dayo’s younger brother coping with her death? The theatre guru said it has not been easy because his son has never known loneliness since he was born. “He was always with Dayo. They were attending the same school, and very rarely do you see them separated. They must always be together. So you can imagine how he now feels,” he said, adding that the lad is somehow adjusting. “All of us have always been very close in our family,” said Jacobs, who remembered the brief letter his son wrote his departed sister recently. Referencing the letter which he said his son wrote and pasted on the wall near the children’s bed, the popular actor said: “Dayo, when shall I see you again?”
Mr Tony Adibe
Interestingly, however, at the end of “Digging For Gold,” I walked up to actress Joke and her husband to congratulate them on the very successful performance. However, in her kind and polished manner, Joke asked if I was going back to Daily Times that night. When I said yes, she pleaded with her husband so that I could join them in their car to Allen Avenue-Awolowo-Road-Ikeja-Round-About, where I could take a vehicle to Agidimgbi. It was a big relief for me to be given a ride from Onikan to Ikeja!
“How did you see the play, Tony?,” Joke asked, as if to break the ice again. “Oh, it’s quite an interesting one. A clever politician’s past came back haunting him. Driven by avarice and greed, he was bent on defrauding, but ended up being duped, apparently by someone smarter or more fraudulent. I think that’s the summary of the play,” I replied. “You really watched the play,” Joke said. Greed was driving the politician who was later defrauded, Jacobs said softly, as he drove the Peugeot 505 Saloon car from Onikan to Ikeja safely. I appreciated them and bid them good night as I alighted at the Allen Avenue-Ikeja-Round-About by Alausa/ Radio-Bus-Stop.
As I reflect on all those encounters with actor Jacobs and his wife, actress Joke, I cannot help but pray that God Almighty will continue to preserve them and their family, granting them quality health and protection. Being humans, we all know that one day each of us shall leave this planet earth for the great beyond. “Every soul must have a taste of death,” says the Koran. St. Paul in the Bible said even though we are alive, we are in the midst of death. That means nobody is exempt from death. But if God grants Uncle Jacobs the grace and means, he can live up to 100 years!
