Nigeria ’s Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has initiated plans to sue the Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria ( PMAN...
Nigeria’s Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has initiated plans to sue the Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria (PMAN) for accusing him of plagiarism and intellectual property infringement.
This bothers on a ‘’creative industry financing” proposal the PMAN brought forward to the honourable minister of information and culture last year, which he has been accused of going on to implement behind their backs.
Counsel to PMAN, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, had in a statement said that “though the conference was deceptively tagged ‘creative industry financing conference’, it is our client’s firm belief that the conference was held in full implementation of our client’s original brain child and ideas as clearly highlighted in their respective presentation of August 5, 2016 and action plan of August 18, 2016, all in the possession of the ministry of information and culture.
“Our client viewed this action as a grave infringement of their intellectual property rights and dubious conversion of their brain child ideas and concept, originating from the painstaking professional study, research and investigation that gulped them over 500,000.”
In reaction to this allegation, the minister Lai Mohammed dismissed it as ridiculous and has threatened to sue PMAN.
Speaking with Channels Television’s Entertainment News, Lai said it was his right as minister to hold a conference on the creative industry.
“As a minister of information and culture, I can’t stop people coming to me with proposals, so when a supposedly reputable organisation as PMAN comes and says he wants to see the minister and wants to organise conferences on creative industry, does that stop me as a minister from organising my own conference on the creative industry, especially when you did not come to me with a blueprint to show me how the conference will be?”
“Even if PMAN’s proposal was feasible, there was no way at that point in time that I could have asked them to go ahead to do it but where is the law that says that the minister must accept any or every proposal from a group? So, your right to organise a conference is exclusive to one person? or a person comes to you and says because he has given you a proposal that he wants to organise a creative conference, you as a minister can’t do your work”?
“But I can assure you I have instructed my lawyers to sue them for defamation.” Lai Mohammed said.
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