Author accuses Nollywood’s Reginald Ebere of plagiarism

An author, and publisher of the naughty wife series, Ify Chiemeziem has accused one of Nollywood’s famous directors, Reginald Ebere of stealing her script and turning it into a movie without her permission or input.

Chiemeziem posted on her facebook wall that she was alerted to the alleged wrongdoing by a fan who had read her novel, and also watched the movie directed by Ebere, which according to her is a reworked version of her intellectual work.

Read her facebook post below:

I was online Sunday morning and a message dropped into my inbox from a gentleman in UK and it read:

“Good morning madam

Compliments of the season

Have you watched ‘Living with a Ghost’? (It’s a nollywood movie) If you haven’t please do and tell me it’s not your idea. (Am sure someone read that your ghost story and modified it)… I watched it on nolly tv here in the UK yesterday and I knew it was your story, although modified It’s called ‘living with a ghost’.”

I quickly searched online for the movie and sadly he was right. Reginald Ebere must have lifted my first Naughty Wife series novel MY GHOST LOVER tweaked it a little and turned it into a movie and called it LIVING WITH A GHOST, featuring stars like Mike Ezuronye, Oge Okoye, Uche Ogbodo etc.

This really makes me sad. Just the other day I was discussing with Chinyere Iwuala Obi-Obasi how some shameless people blatantly steal other people’s intellectual properties online and pass it off as their own original work. Little did I know that I was already a victim.

I am a writer and I work hard to create my stories. I was heavily pregnant when I wrote ‘MY GHOST LOVER’. I stayed awake night after night, bent over my laptop sweating out story. While people like Reginald Ebere were obviously snored in their beds, I was creating a story and hoping I would make something out of it, only for this so-called Nollywood director to pick it, change some little things in it, make it into a movie and took credits for it.

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If this is what Reginald Ebere does with his company, Script Factory, I am shocked and hurt.

I am not going to let this slide. I am going to take a stand for all writers who wallow in poverty while the likes others feed fat on their hard work all because many Nigerians do not respect other people’s intellectual properties.

I have seen Nollywood movies where some dubious movie directors do nothing but lift foreign movies, change the actors, English language and settings and then claim it to be their original work all because they believe that the owners will not dare come after them here in Nigeria. It is shameful.

I do not know why I was picked on. Did he think that writers in Nigeria are nonentities lacking the wherewithal to fight for justice? What gave him the temerity to flip through somebody’s work, decided he liked it and use it without considering its consequences?

 

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