These are not the best of times for sizzling musician, Tiwa Savage as popular singer Danny Young has filed a N200 million lawsuit against her and label record, Mavins Records for purportedly unlawfully using lyrics of his 2009 hit single; ‘Oju Ti Won’, in her latest song titled; ‘One’.
Danny Young who is angry and displeased with the songstress, said;
“I am forced to take legal action against Tiwa because she ignored me when I reached out to her. Tiwa, I know people love you, even me. But I still have to sue you because you stole my shit. A simple dialogue would have solved this but you preferred it this way. Now we will be in court discussing some N200,000,000 damages.”
However, Justin Ige, lawyer to Danny Young and the Principal Attorney at Creative Legal, said;
“Piracy is bad enough, but it is perhaps worse when creative people appear to completely disrespect the intellectual property rights of fellow creatives. Such conduct should not be without due consequences. A lay man may not understand what we are fighting for as it is more technical than just the lyrics.”
“Nigeria is a place where writers do not get credits from the artiste they wrote songs for because the artiste wants to get all the glory alone. Producers also do not know that they have a right to royalties even after being paid for the beat.”
“If I contribute one word to your composition, I automatically have a right to credits as one of the writers. This is a world standard and anything less is unacceptable especially when coming from an artiste that has international exposure.”
