A Nigerian lawyer has advised veteran highlife singer Gentleman Mike Ejeagha to sue skit maker Brain Jotter for using his song to generate millions of naira while offering only a N2 million compensation.
This advice follows Brain Jotter’s search for the highlife singer after a viral skit that featured Ejeagha’s 2010 song.
On the X platform, a legal practitioner known as Nupe Lawyer highlighted the implications of copyright infringement, suggesting that Ejeagha could gain more by suing Brain Jotter rather than accepting the N2 million token.
“I hope the man has a good lawyer😀 you can’t use someone’s song for content raking millions and offer to give the man ‘2 million’ as if you are helping the man🤷♂️,” he wrote.
The post has sparked mixed reactions from social media users. Some argued that the song had been dormant and hadn’t earned as much in the past 14 years.
Reactions below:
- bigmorsh: “Not sure the man go do any case sef after 2 million. Since the song has been there, did it fetch him 2m?”
- OritogunM: “He danced to the song; he didn’t utter a single word, didn’t change the lyrics, didn’t change the tone, didn’t perform the song on stage, the man’s name appeared on the original song tag on Instagram. Now he has to pay royalties? Megan Thee Stallion is presently trending on TikTok; she should also demand royalties from people for dancing to her song?”
- IdanFederal: “People are funny sha. person dance to song and be blow. if na so he dey be you know how many artist go don blow?…nobody claimed any intellectual property here like say e reproduce am.”
- Creed_printz: “Wtf is two million, we ain’t serious in this country.”
- revelationrabbi: “The funny thing is that the same Nigerians who can’t wrap their heads around the infringement of intellectual property as theft are the same Nigerians who want to protest against bad governance.”