Practically unknown, until the spotlight shined on him for stealing the creative work of one of Nigeria’s most loved artists; Hosea Yohanna – a self-declared upcoming artiste also known as Wisekid – got social media febrile with conversations.
A Twitter handle @AfricaFactsZone had shared the story of an impersonator, Wisekid, who was profiting off Wizkid’s successful ‘Made in Lagos’ album, after uploading a track-by-track clone of the album on streaming platforms.
Wisekid, in what could be mistaken as genius, transformed the album title from Made in Lagos to ‘Lasgidi Made’, rearranging the order of the tracks on the album.
Listening to the tracks on both albums, it isn’t hard to recognise the full cloning of the tracks: beats and lyrics stay the same; the only differences are the names of the artists and the order in which the songs appear.
Platforms such as Apple Music, Amazon, and Tidal became hosting grounds for the Lasgidi Made album. Going undetected and exploiting the fallible systems to the fullest, Wisekid earned a whopping N30 million monthly, according to Africa Facts Zone.
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Following the whistleblowing, Wisekid stepped out in defence of himself, denying ever duplicating Wizkid’s album, after posting a tweet – as captured by a Twitter user – displaying the success of his plagiarised work in form of streaming figures, and captioning it “On God”.
Sharing the spotlight was the upcoming artiste’s former management FreeMe, as it was believed that the ‘album release’ was a product of the organisation.
Denying any involvement, FreeMe released a statement, washing its hands off the project, stating that “While it is true that he distributes some of his content through our organization, we will like to make it categorically clear that the said, ‘Lasgidi Made’ album was not distributed via our platform.”
The organisation further noted that it would be “deleting the rest of Wisekid’s content on our platform and we have informed our legal team to immediately commence investigation on the issue and prosecute the matter to the full extent of the law.”
Commenting on the issue, Wizkid’s manager Jada Pollock described the artiste as “fraudulent”, adding that “RCA have been actively working on taking down the illegal uploads across all digital platforms from yesterday morning.”
However, the comment made by Wizkid’s management team did not reveal if the Made in Lagos album was registered with the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) to indicate the next steps to be taken on the matter.
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Copyright Infringement
In legal terms, Wisekid’s act could be described as an infringement on the copyright of the original work.
Copyright infringement is the use or production of copyright-protected material without the permission of the copyright holder.
Literary, musical or artistic works, names, movie and song titles, and other short phrases are protected by copyright laws enforced by the NCC.
The enforcement arm of the commission investigates allegations of copyright infringement and intellectual theft, and prosecuting the offender if found guilty.
A search conducted by BizWatch Nigeria showed that most artists in Nigeria do not register their songs, beats, albums, or lyrics; giving copyright violators access to unprotected works.
Further investigation revealed that Wisekid also ripped off other artists apart from Wizkid, one of his songs ‘Gimme love’ is an exact replica of Kizz Daniel’s song ‘Laye’.
What Experts Are Saying
Speaking with BizWatch Nigeria, a lawyer familiar with copyright issues – who chose to comment anonymously – explained that original works should be registered with the copyrights commission to prevent theft of intellectual property; to have solid evidence of ownership.
The lawyer added that Wizkid could sue Wisekid even if his album had not been trademarked by proving the originality of the work.
Giving insights into the prevalence of intellectual property theft in Nigeria, a music producer, Mr. Peace, told BizWatch Nigeria that intellectual property theft in the Nigerian music industry was mostly perpetrated by upcoming artists and sometimes by established artists.
How To Protect Your Work As An Artist
Mr. Peace called on artists and record labels to embrace protecting their intellectual property from copyright violators.
Among the works qualified for copyright protection include literary works, musical works, artistic works, cinematograph films, sound recordings, and Broadcast.
The above-listed works will not be eligible to be copyrighted except the following occurs:
- Sufficient effort was expended in making the work to give it its original character;
- The work has been fixed in a definite medium of expression that is now known or to be developed later from which it can be perceived either directly or with the aid of any machine;
- At the time the work was done, it was intended by the author to be used as a model or pattern to be multiplied by an industrial process.
Contributing writer: Adepeju Aina
