The death of Biyi Bandele, a very creative and cerebral Nigerian has been announced by his daughter, Temi Bandele, via a Facebook Post on the handle of Biyi Bandele.
https://www.digital.zenithbank.com/ZEQ/ZEQ-jan-2026/index.html#p=1According to the short release, he passed on in Lagos on Sunday, August 7 2022. Herein below is a recast of the announcement-
“I am heartbroken to share the sudden and unexpected death on Sunday, 7th of August in Lagos of my father, Biyi Bandele.
Biyi was a prodigiously talented writer and filmmaker, as well as a loyal friend and beloved father. He was a storyteller to his bones, with an unblinking perspective, singular voice and wisdom which spoke boldly through all of his art, in poetry, novels, plays and on screen. He told stories that made a profound impact and inspired many all over the world. His legacy will live on through his work.
He was taken from us much too soon. He had already said so much so beautifully and had so much more to say.
We ask everyone to please respect the privacy of his family and friends as we grieve his loss.
The Man- Biyi Bandele
Biyi Bandele (born Biyi Bandele-Thomas; 13 October 1967)was a Nigerian novelist, playwright and filmmaker. Bandele was a UK-based Nigerian writer for fiction, theatre, journalism, television, film and radio. He moved to London in 1990.
Bandele was born to Yoruba parents in Kafanchan, Kaduna State, Nigeria in 1967. His father Solomon Bandele Thomas was a veteran of the Burma Campaign in World War II, while Nigeria was still part of the British Empire. Bandele spent the first 18 years of his life in the north-central part of the country. Bandele had ambitions to be a writer and when he was 14 years old he won a short-story competition.[2] Later on, he moved to Lagos, then in 1987 studied drama at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. He won the International Student Playscript competition of 1989 with an unpublished play, Rain, before claiming the 1990 British Council Lagos Award for a collection of poems. He moved to London in 1990 at the age of 22 armed with the manuscripts of two novels. His books were published, and he was given a commission by the Royal Court Theatre.
Bandele worked with the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as writing radio drama and screenplays for television. His plays include: Rain; Marching for Fausa (1993); Resurrections in the Season of the Longest Drought (1994); Two Horsemen (1994), selected as Best New Play at the 1994 London New Plays Festival; Death Catches the Hunter and Me and the Boys (published in one volume, 1995); and Oroonoko, an adaptation of Aphra Behn‘s 17th-century novel of the same name. In 1997 he did a successful dramatization of Chinua Achebe‘s Things Fall Apart. Brixton Stories, Bandele’s stage adaptation of his own novel The Street (1999), premiered in 2001 and was published in one volume with his play Happy Birthday Mister Deka, which premiered in 1999. He also adapted Lorca‘s Yerma in 2001.
He was writer-in-residence with Talawa Theatre Company from 1994 to 1995, resident dramatist with the Royal National Theatre Studio (1996), the Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, in 2000–01. He also acted as Royal Literary Fund Resident Playwright at the Bush Theatre from 2002 to 2003.
Bandele has written of the impact of John Osborne‘s Look Back in Anger, which he saw on a hire-purchase television set in a railway town in northern Nigeria:
And so although I had yet to set foot outside Kafanchan, although I knew nothing about postwar British society, or the Angry Young Men, or anything about Osborne when I met Jimmy Porter on the screen… there was no need for introductions: I had known Jimmy all my life.
Biyi Bandele’s novels, which include The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond (1991) and The Street (1999), have been described as “rewarding reading, capable of wild surrealism and wit as well as political engagement.” His 2007 novel, Burma Boy, reviewed in The Independent by Tony Gould, was called “a fine achievement” and lauded for providing a voice for previously unheard Africans
His directorial debut film Half of a Yellow Sun was screened in the Special Presentation section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, and received a “rapturous reception”. The film received a wide range of critical attention. His new film, entitled Fifty, was included in the 2015 London Film Festival. He also directed the third season of the popular MTV drama series, Shuga. In 2022 he directed the first Netflix Nigerian Original series, Blood Sisters.
He was announced as the director of the new Netflix and Ebonylife TV co-production “Elesin Oba, The king’s Horseman” the screen adaptation of Wole Soyinka‘s stage play “Death And The King’s Horseman“, and is set to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2022.
Herein below is the link to the thriller-
