₦airaland Forum

Okudiover:
Most of the commentators here do not even know what copyright infringement is how much more heard about the term"Plagiarism". It is an act of intellectual dishonesty where one reproducesreproduces another author's work in whole or in part without the express permission of the author and without acknowledging the original author in anyway. I have heard of this case before when Ekwensi was still alive. It would be very sad to the literary world.

Please can you give more info about what you heard that time?

nonjebose:
. Exactly my take. The OP has not been able to clarify that there was no understanding between the writer of Jilki Magayi and CE. Another issue is, was CE's work verbatim translation of the original work or having a similar plot and characterisation? Some of these old works are told as folklores without any reference to the author or copyright. CE grew up in Minna, may have heard the story, wrote an adaptation years later without any immediate challenge.

It was verbatim! 100% In fact some words he couldn't translate he left them in their Hausa form.

Angelsss:
am guessing you really believed Mr Ekwensi did this based on the part of Nigeria he comes from...
because he is IBO...you are strongly convinced such a writer would do that...
but you don't know that for a fact...
you weren't there when the book was published...
so you don't know the circumstances surrounding it...
what if he took permission before? that's if he actually did this...
and why are just hearing it after so many years?
Stop this! stereotyping ain't healthy...
We should all support one another instead of trying to divide this country with malicious lies...

Nobody is talking about his tribe here Madam. I didn't even know he was Igbo till I started researching about him.

fujirice:
Don't be narrow minded.
Just because OP alleged something(without proof) and the setting of the book is in Hausa made the allegation true.
Before you jump into conclusion, at least try and find out more about the author and his works.
The passport of Mallam Ilia is set in Hausa land too

Oga what more proof do you need? Both books are available in the market. Get them and compare. The fact that they were written 33years apart shall tell you who plagiarized who.
BTW the debate is not whether he copied, it's whether he obtained permission or not. Which we can't find any evidence that he did, even if he did, it's mandatory he acknowledge the original author even on the cover page.

obailala:
@Op..
I totally doubt a renown and respectable writer like Cyprain Ekwensi would just pick-up and copy a book 100% without some form of acknowledgement or proper agreement with the original author. Besides if Cyprain plagiarised the book, we wouldn't be hearing about this case for the first time in 2016, a dispute would have been raised decades ago.

Thank you sir!
It's same way some people question a five star army General had a secondary school certificate. It's highly unlikely and doubtful, but not impossible.
The book did not carry any trace of reference to Joh Tafida Umaru, nor did further reviews about the book.
What we are asking is.
1. If he had obtained permission to translate and sell the book the least he'd do was to acknowledge the original authors..
2. Not doing that at all amounts to plagiarism, or at least makes it appear to the world so. That is assuming he had the permission and kept it a secrect.

Paretomaster:
no wonder, the whole setting and names in the African Night Entertainment is completely Hausa, Cyprian...didnt even bother to change anything....

anyway no be today E start....have been seeing traces of MAGANA...JARI CE in some famous works too...

Really please can you share who does that to my favorite book of all time?

kings009:
Is the writer spurred by justice or tribalism? Before a book can be published, it goes through a lot of screening and believe me, it is almost impossible to directly copy one's work that as you opined had won an award without due consultations and settlement. You think you know more about plagiarism than the author in Hausa? If you want to truly help, you should have inquired from the publisher of the Hausa version and from the author. You dont know the understanding they had that kept him quiet. Make proper findings before trowing stones from US.

It's the understanding that they had that we as the readers want to know, and I guess they both owe us that. What is the shame in acknowledging you translated a book? that in itself is commendable.
Chinua Achebe refused to allow 50cent use his book title as the former's movie title even at a price of $1million! There's pride in literature, something invaluable.

nwaanambra1:
[size=14pt]oga op and shameless daily trust newspapers that cant do a simple research!


please stop displaying your lack of knowledge of the literally world to the universe!

there is what is called adaptations in literature!


ola rotimi's "the gods are not blame" is an adaptation of the Greek classic "Oedipus Rex" rotimi did not made any reference or appreciation of the work in the novel he wrote because he translated it from Greek to English language therefore he has all copy rights to the English version!


same way Cyprian owns all copy rights to the English translation of the hausa version of the African night entertainment.

thank me for lecture.

for those already insulting igbos, big shame on you![/size]

That's a bloody lie! If you 'adapt' someone's work the least you could do is to state it clear that you 'adapted' from so so and so. At least it should be acknowledged in preface, forward or reviews.
Go and check the stand of the law on translation plagiarism.

Sparkle777:
Sorry, but am not so sure of the title. The novel about fulani and the wanderers curse. Reason being that Cyprian Ekwensi wrote many Hausa stories,it ll be good to know if most or all were plagiarised.

Am not aware of other books. Understand me am not trying to pull him down, I believe he was a great writer, even the translation aspect of it is genius, but it's downright fraud without acknowledging the original authors.

nwaanambra1:
[size=14pt]oga just some simple questions for you.


ARE YOU MORE EDUCATED OF MORE ENLIGHTENED THAN NORTHERN NIGERIA PUBLISHING COMPANY ZARIA?

OR ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT NO BODY IN NORTHERN NIGERIA PUBLISHING COMPANY CAN READ IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND NONE OF THEM HAVE READ THE WORK OF CYPRIAN EKWENSI ON AFRICAN NIGHT ENTERTAINMENT??

ARE YOU AWARE THAT AFRICAN NIGHT ENTERTAINMENT HAS BEEN AN APPROVED NOVEL FOR WAEC AND NECO IN NIGERIA FOR A LONG TIME NOW? (BOTH IN THE NORTH AND OTHER PARTS OF NIGERIA), AND I GUESS NONE OF THESE LITERACY AND EDUCATION ORGANISATION KNOWS OF THE EXISTENCE OF THE HAUSA VERSION?



NOW TO FINISH THIS VERY STUPID WASTE OF TIME, GO AND CHECK THE RECOMMENDED NOVELS FOR HAUSA LITERATURE AND IF TAFIDA'S NOVEL IS NOT ONE OF THEM!


OR ARE YOU SAYING THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT AWARE THAT SOMEBODY ALREADY WROTE THIS NOVEL IN HAUSA?



SEE UNA BLOOD DEY BOIL BECASUE CYPRIAN IS AN IGBO MAN!

FOR YOU INFO, CYPRIAN IS MORE OF AN HAUSA MAN THAN AN IGBO MAN - HE WAS BORN AND BROUGHT UP IN THE NORTH!


OH AND WHILE YOU GUYS ARE AT IT, YOU CAN ALSO CHECK FOR THE SOURCE OF HIS NOVELS LIKE THE BURNING GRASS, THE PASSPORT OF MALLAM ILLIA AND THE REST OF CYPRIAN'S NOVEL THAT ARE ALL BASED ON HAUSA CULTURE!


IF ONLY YOU KNOW HOW CYPRIANS NOVELS HAS HELPED IN ENLIGHTENING THE NORTHERN REGION, YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN PROPOSING FOR A MEDAL OF HONOR FOR HIM AND NOT THIS TRASH TALK!

OGA ABEG GET YOURSELF BUSY WITH MORE SERIOUS THINGS AND LEAVE GRA GRA FOR AGBEROS!


HIGH BP GO SOON KILL ALL OF UNA OVER IGBO MATTER!


IGBOS ARE TALENTED AND NOBODY CAN TAKE THAT AWAY FROM THEM NO MATTER YOU PEOPLES HATES!











oh! and wile you are sending your inquiry emails, do try and send one to Cyprian and also dont forget to send another one to Tafida!

sabi sabi no go kill you! [/size]

Guy calm down, the only persons blood wey dey hot na you.
You are the one bringing ethnic coloration to this topic. Am sure if the case was the other way round your opinion will make a 180 degrees turn.
If Ekwensi and Tafida/NNPC had any agreement to give right to translate and sell, we the public deserve to know otherwise it appears as a clear case of plagiarism to us.
All we are asking both parties and the world is to give us prove and why John Tafida was never acknowledged in his translated book?
FYI am not intimidated by your victim mentality card.

Caveatemptor:
If you goggle Jiki Magayi and John Tafida the result is a lot of write ups in Hausa language. I also found out that this book Jiki Magayi was co written by one John Moultrine East. This John East was said to have helped pioneer the writing of Hausa lamnguage in books.
There is little information on these books .
My suspicion is that John Tafida might have told the story to John East who now put it in written form.


Still doesn't justify plagiarism by Ekwensi though. The original author should have been acknowledged and an explanation made that it was a translation.

Thank you that's all we are asking.

kindness4life:
Dear writer, I hope u did your home work very well before putting this up. Plagiarism is a serious crime and sensitive issue in the world of literature. Cyprian Ekwesi is a well respected writer as we all know. Why not find a way of contacting him maybe by email or something to hear his own side of the story before conclusions are made.

The article was originally written by Ibrahim Musa on DailyTrust of January this year. in the article he clearly mentioned his attempts to get a clarification about the issue but no tangible response was obtained.

farellstone:
It is a translation,not plagiarism,you can't just plagiarize in literary world without getting sanction for it.So this is not plagiarism.The same way Ola Rotimi rewrote Sophocles' Oedipus nd gave it another title"The gods are not to blame".so my point is, you can translate or rewrite another person's work,sometimes you will need to get permission from the writer or the publisher.

Actually it's a most to obtain a permission before translating someone's work. If you do that without giving credit to the original writer then it's capital plagiarism.

Sparkle777:
Theres a reason for any action. Op, pls do more research and get back to us. Also check up on 'Anthills of the Savannah'. Lets just know. Tnx.

Will try to do that. Thanks.

emonkey:
[size=14pt]Who published Jiki Magayi and what were the terms of his publishing agreement ? This is what should be your focus and not who wrote what ? Publishing terms are never always the same.
1. If the original writer sold it outright to the publisher , the publisher can assign another writer to write the translation or rewrite the book without giving any credit or money to the original writer. I have previously sold two books to a foreign writer under this sort of agreement with full understanding of the consequences.
2. Have you ever asked who John Tafida Umaru is/was ? The person may not exist and might have just been created by the publisher for the purpose of localising the book. Does he/she have any other literary credit apart from this book ?
3. Was Jiki Magayi still in copyright when Ekwensi did the translation? Copyright typically expires 50 years after the death of the author, if not renewed,
Check the facts properly . Don't criticise unduly.

Most of Wole Soyinka's plays are not original by the way. They are brilliant adaptations of nearly forgotten classics . His plays were good and became famous, made him famous. They were not original in any case and the families of Greek authors who have been dead for centuries are not looking all over for the Nobel Laureate to sue,[/size]

You might be right with some points, but;
1. Jiki Magayi was published under Northern Nigeria Publishing Company NNPC Zaria. Which I doubt would ever do such kind of business.
2 John Tafida Umaru was real and so was Rupert East who co-authored the book and wrote many others. He grew up in Wusasa, and his family can be traced.
3. NNPC reprints/reproduces/republsih the book periodically, and I doubt if they fail to do that for iconic Jiki Magayi.
I have sent inquiry emails through both the publishers of the English and Hausa version awaiting their position about the book.

*Modified
I have sent an email inquiry about the issue to the original writer of the article Ibrahim Musa and the publishers of the two versions.
It's sad we don't have any Avenue to either independently investigate or an authority that can do that.
But I Assure you I would never see a wrong doing and do nothing about it.
Thanks to those who have read the two versions and have confirmed their undoubted similarity.
Also those optimistic Ekwensi might obtain some covert license to translate the book without acknowledging the original writer, I will try to find that out too.
***REMODIFIED
I received two emails moments ago from the initial investigator of the case Dr. Ibrahim Musa this is what the mail read. " From the little I could glean from my sources, the then northern Nigeria regional government actually sued Ekwensi for plagiarism. Unfortunately, civil war broke when the case was incubating and everything halted as a result. By the time the war was over, there was no more regional governments. The system became unitary with emergence of states. Thus, nobody was interested in revisiting that 'inconsequential' issue. Justice Mamman Nasir can shed light on this."
Cc emonkey nwaanambra1 sparkle777 shizzle111 Angelsss nonjebose zaboy gaddafithe2nd Ishilove redoil phi001 fujirice Okudiover Nickydrake ihuomadinihu kindness4life adexsimply ideykwum ......
Thank you all for making the thread lively. I guess the above information should have been the first on this thread which would have made things clear in the onset. Nevertheless, I believe we all learn something new today.
We have resolved to do our best to reopen the case and pursue it to a logical conclusion. I am directed to contact Justice Mamman Nasir for further information and guidance about the case. It baffles how and why they allow the issue to rest over all these years.

[b]I was reading a thread earlier reminiscing with great pleasure when I received the shock of the year. The thread was hosted by the supermod himself Ishilove www.nairaland.com/3228867/nairalanders-how-many-remember-these the thread was about classic novels written in English language.
What caught my attention was the book titled African Night's Entertainment'. Having read both the Hausa and the English versions, I never paid attention to the discrepancy in the names of the authors until I saw it on the thread. I zoomed in the picture of the book to make sure I saw the name of the author correctly. I quickly googled and I was shocked to find out that while the Hausa version 'Jiki Magayi' was authored by John Tafida Umaru and co-authored by popular Hausa writer Rupert East, the English version was claimed to be written by Cyprian Ekwensi!
I simply added John Tafida in the search and I came through this article written by one Ibrahim Musa. I searched further but couldn't find any tangible action taken against this greatest plagiarism of all times in Africa, in fact in the world of literature.
PS for those who can read Hausa if you haven't read the Tafida's version try to do and compare.
When Jiki Magayi was first authored, Cyprian Ekwensi was twelve years old![/b]

In the literary world, Cyprian Ekwensi is a
household name. This holds true particularly
for the volume of work he churned out within
the corpus of African literature. He was a very
good story teller, especially of the urban tale,
that many people see him as a better story
teller than the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka or
even the more famous novelist, Chinua Achebe.
In stark contrast, John Tafida can be
considered a nonentity. He is not even popular
in the region (Northern Nigeria) where he was
born and bred, and where Hausa, the language
he wrote in is the unofficial lingua franca. The
world knows very little about Tafida, who lived
in the obscure Wusasa quarters in Zaria and
wrote, perhaps, only one book in a vernacular.
All these disadvantages robbed him of a
chance to popularity and even a recognition for
Pulitzer or Booker Prize, or some other award.
In another contrast, the two did not even write
in the same medium (language), and there was
no clear evidence their paths ever crossed.
Why am I interested in these novelists despite
that my background has nothing to do with
literature? As a physician, I should be seen
writing about diseases and cure, or on great
personalities in Medicine. For obvious reasons,
I have scant interest in reading novels. My little
passion for it died with my teenage. However,
from the few I have read, I am left with a puzzle
that refused to get solved despite my curiosity
and nagging. I learned how to read in Hausa
language first before I could read in English.
So, it was natural that most of the books I came
across early in my life were authored in Hausa.
I must confess that very few of those books left
a mark on me since the vast majority had a
pattern of telling stories on a romance with a
happy ending. Scholars of Hausa literature even
tagged them as Kano market literature;
apparently a pejorative term signifying poor
writing quality, juvenile treatment of the
subjects and limited creativity. However, there
was a generation of creative works before the
advent of Kano market literature which was
outstanding. I can still remember passages and
snippets from Abubakar Imam’s Ruwan Bagaja,
Tafawa Balewa’s Shaihu Umar, John Tafida’s
Jiki Magayi, Gwarzo Muhammad’s Idon
Matambayi, and Bello Kagara’s Gandoki. These
five novels were authored decades before I was
born and they remain classics. They emerged
out of a literary competition organized by the
then head of the Translation Bureau in Zaria,
Mr. Rupert East, in 1933. Incidentally, Mr. East
himself is the co-author of Jiki Magayi. The
main drive behind that award was to stimulate
the culture of creative writing in Hausa
language. The overall winner, Imam, went on to
become well established as an author whose
other books like Magana Jari Ce, Karamin Sani,
and Tafiya Mabudin Ilmi became must read for
every pupil passing through formal school in
northern Nigeria.
[b]It was not until 1955 when John Tafida’s Jiki
Magayi was published. This notwithstanding
that it won an award in 1933. By 1962, Cyprian
Ekwensi also published his novel titled An
African Night Entertainment. These two books,
by commission or omission, happened to be an
exact replica of each other. They only differed
in a way that one was written in Hausa and the
other in English. From the first sentence to the
last paragraph, Ekwensi appeared to have lifted
and translated verbatim the work of John
Tafida. I tried to find out whether Tafida’s
consent was sought before his work was copy-
pasted? I could not get a definitive answer to
this query. What is apparent to me is that there
is no acknowledgment or reference anywhere to
Jiki Magayi as the original idea which Ekwensi
stole and appropriated the whole credit for
himself. Nothing like that appeared in the
preface or foreword of Ekwensi’s plagiarized
book.
In the Encyclopedia Britannica entry page,
Ekwensi; an Igbo man, was said to have been
born on September 26, 1921, in Minna (present
capital of Niger state). By implication, he was
barely 12 years when Tafida authored Jiki
Magayi. This evidence is a pointer that Tafida
wrote his book at the time Ekwensi could not
have dreamt of becoming a novelist. Ironically,
it appears that there is a grand design to lend
this issue a fig leaf. This is a clear case of
literary fraud that should not be let to go
without correcting the wicked wrongdoing.[/b]
It is not uncommon in the literary world to see
prominent personalities involved in giraffing
other people’s work without proper attribution.
Even Martin Luther of saintly projection was
found to have plagiarized some sections of his
dissertation. His famous speech titled “I Have a
Dream” was also a subject of contention. Yet
no single case to my knowledge is as worst as
Ekwensi’s, not even Johnny Cash’s case of
absorbing Gordon Jenkin’s lyrics in his song
titled “Folsom Prison Blues” could parallel the
injustice done to Tafida by Ekwensi.
Finally, I crave the indulgence of the
Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) and
National Copyright Commission to institute a
joint probe that would unravel the mystery
behind this serious distortion of literary history,
or what I choose to call literary fraud of the
millennium. We owe it to John Tafida to ensure
that justice is done him and his remaining
family. If it is discovered that his work was
lifted without consent or compensation, every
penny derived from that work should be given
to his family. The fact that none of them came
forward to sue Ekwensi for stealing their work
is a signal that they may not be in the right
frame of social standing to warrant such. They
need this compensation to pay school fees to
train more Tafidas. I also expect the federal
government of Nigeria to withdraw the national
honor awarded to Ekwensi. We have seen in
Germany where two ministers (defense and
education) were stripped of their Ph.D. honors
after it was discovered that they had
extensively plagiarized their work.
Ibrahim Musa is a graduate student in
Epidemiology at Texas A&M University. He can
be reached on muazamusa@yahoo.com

www.dailytrust.com.ng/news/art-ideas/ekwensi-s-an-african-night-entertainment-and-john-tafida-s-jiki-magayi/130379.html