Nobody likes their intellectual properties stolen and Nigerian author Chuma Nwokolo seems to be ahead of many creatives in Nigeria. It also appears that creatives do the same to each other. The case of Nigerian author Chuma Nwokolo and Bright Wonder Obasi producer of Nollywood movie ‘If I am President’ isn’t exciting.
Nollywood Movie ‘If I Am President’ Lawsuit
Chuma Nwokolo recently walked out of a lawsuit that pronounced he gets infringement compensation from Nollywood filmmaker, Bright Wonder Obasi. The later had been accused of using parts of Nwokolo’s work in ‘Ten Commandments of Nigerian Politics’. The 2018 Nollywood movie by Bright Wonder Obasi ‘If I am President’ is charged for having stolen scenes.
Nwokolo had made a blog to report details of the lawsuit. The blog, reveals that the book was under a creative commons license.
A lot is specified for intellectual properties under a creative commons license. People are free to republish his work in ‘Ten Commandments of Nigerian Politics’ for free according to the licence. However, they are to seek consent from him or credit him for it which he reports in his blog post.
“To be re-posted and republished in full, for free, without reference to me, so long as I was acknowledged as the author and it was not remixed”.
Nwokolo rightly noted that there is an undeniable resemblance of his work to some scenes of the movie. He neither gave a consent nor got credit as the copyright law demands.
In his most recent blog, he notifies his readers that all elements of the lawsuit have been resolved.
Copyright and piracy are the most probable ways to ruin the work of a creative artist. Nollywood creatives and book authors deal with this issue every day as most of them don’t copyright their content.
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