By Kesandu Egburonu
Creativity is what brought this world into existence in the first place. The first Creator—God—created the heavens and the earth and everything accompanying it, especially, above all, humans. The features of man and woman distinctively show the work of an intellectual way too complex to even start to fathom. Call these creations a template for other creations to come and since then, man has not looked back in creating many other wonderful things that have shaped today’s universe.
I was 14 year-old when I made my first creation. That was in Senior Secondary School 1 and it was an essay about my “worst nightmare.” Prior to that, I had always been literary inclined but never written an essay, let alone writing one under exam pressures in a packed hall. The fact that essay eventually got me famous in school and got me a slot on the school’s elite literary and debating group made it even more surreal.
Now, imagine after all that sweat and stress, someone stole that essay from me and the shine and fame along with it, think how crazy that would have driven me. I’d have gone mad that instant. That is exactly how many creatives feel when their intellectual property gets stolen by intellectual thieves. It’s like stealing a baby from its mother after 9 whole months of pregnancy and birthing. You might never remain the same afterwards, just the same as how paranoid you get after being a victim of fraud.
It is quite sad that in this part of the world, intellectual property doesn’t command the same respect that regular commerce and trade does. If you ask a person to invest N1 Million in cartons of noodles to be resold for a profit, the investor is far more likely to drop that million than he is to invest in a novel, screenplay or any other intellectual property. It is my belief that the black man, or rather, the Nigerian man’s inability to lay a finger on abstract things like intellectual property, must be the reason behind this. However, I do not feel there is any logical reason to go about stealing intellectual property because one doesn’t weigh its worth in gold.
Intellectual theft ranges from the lowest to the highest and most despicable deeds. On social media, for instance, you see a person make a post on Twitter, only for another to lift that quote and post on Facebook as though it were his. When called out, they’d make you sound like a mad person who’s blowing things out of proportion. I once wrote an article on my personal blog only to see the media plagiarise my work and even backdate the post to make theirs appear as though it was first written, and mine as the copycat. That is a personal experience and I’m sure there are many others with similar incidents like mine.
On a much wider scale when it comes to intellectual theft, I read of a Nigerian writer who found out his novel had been rewritten in Asian languages by a Nigerian resident there—who was making a killing from the sales of these rewritten books. The amount this thief was making was over 10times the amount the original authority had ever made from his work. He contacted Interpol and a warrant was put out for the arrest of this thief. That’s how bad it is and something many creatives suffer in either small scale, or large scale. The scourge of intellectual theft is appalling and appears on the rise every passing day.
What is to be done about this, especially in this part of the world? If not checked, this theft could discourage many creatives from creating new works that could impact audiences worldwide. We certainly cannot go on like this. The worst part is that in Nigeria, laws governing intellectual property are not being enforced as should be. Without consequences, what is to stop the perpetrators of crimes from carrying on like business as usual. What is even more annoying is that when we hear of intellectual property theft, we go about like nothing strange happened. It is this twisted mentality that needs to be reset and this can only happen when offenders face very stiff punishments.
Nigeria and Africa need to wake up to the sad reality of this cancerous worm called intellectual theft and act accordingly. Creatives and their brainchild need to be protected. The authorities must do well in enforcing these laws or making even more stringent laws to protect creatives. If we sleep on this, then, we might just see the slow death of intellectual property in this part of the world. God help us if that happens.
