Culture icon and a frontline scholar on Yoruba culture, Professor Ulli Beier, is dead. He was 91.

His death around noon today in Sydney, Australia was announced by the Chairman of the Governing Board of the Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding, Osogbo, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola who quoted the deceased family as informing the Centre in a telephone call.

The Executive Director of the Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding, Osogbo, Prof Wole Ogundele, said Ulli’s son, Tunji Beier, broke the news to him at about 3 p.m. today in a telephone call.

Oyinlola, while reacting to Professor Ulli Beier’s death due to old age, described it as a great blow to him personally and to all lovers of Yoruba culture in general.

He said Yorubaland and the academic community owed Professor Ulli Beier a lot for his great efforts in intellectual preservation of several aspects of the Yoruba culture that would have gone extinct.