Nollywood actress, Stephanie Okereke Linus has been fingered by one Daniella Madudu for alleged copyright infringement of her book titled Behind Her Veil.
TheNETng gathered that Madudu had spoken out because her book was given to one of her friends, Joy Ndidi, to edit, only for her to see major excerpts of her book revealed in Stephanie Okereke Linus’ movie, Dry.
Madudu had also sent letters to the actress regarding this
Madudu also stated that Joy Ndidi is a close associate of the actress, and thus, both parties may have exchanged excepts of her book which was made into a movie, Dry by the actress.
When TheNETng reached out to the actress, she stated that she was unhappy with the media for not finding out the truth.
Okereke-Linus added that TheNETng was the only media house that reached out to her to find out the truth.
However, the actress in a statement admitted that she indeed received a letter from one Rafiu Bello acting on behalf of Daniella Madudu on May 19, accusing her of appropriation of an ‘original literary work’ that was allegedly stolen from her by Joy Ndidi (an allegation that has been roundly refuted).
According to the statement, ‘That these persons have since gone ahead with their premeditated plan to defame me upon allegations they know to be baseless, spurious and glaringly untrue is no longer news as the media is presently awash with the ‘fruit of their labour’ and ordinarily I would not have dignified it with a response but for the sake of posterity and lest my silence be termed an admission of any wrongdoing whatsoever, I will simply proceed to state the facts here, viz:
‘I registered the script for my movie ‘DRY’ with The United States Copyright Office on November 28, 2011.
‘That I registered the script for my movie ‘DRY’ with The Nigerian Copyright Commission on July 27, 2012.
‘That my movie ‘DRY’ was shot in the months of August and September, 2012 in Nigeria.’
Okereke Linus said that among many other things, the letter demanded that she credits Madudu with ownership of her work, pay the sum of N60,000,000 and royalties, or face a ‘campaign of calumny’.
‘The so called ‘original literary work’ of the Daniella Madudu, I was supposed to have appropriated in my movie, has never been registered at The Nigerian Copyright Commission even as we speak.
‘That the unofficial trailer for ‘DRY’ was released to lend my voice in support of the ‘Child Not Bride’ campaign.
‘That Ms. Joy Ndidi’s first ever contact with me was in 2013 (DRY was already a finished project at this time) and it was not until June 2013 that she was officially engaged to provide content and ad-placement for my personal blog, ‘The Stephanie Daily’ for all of six (6) months and this she did from the comfort of her home.’