THISDAY

Of Hackers and Pirates

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y web portal, olusegunad­eniyi. com is loaded today. From the transcript of what President Buhari’s spokesman, Mr Femi Adesina said at my book presentati­on to that of his immediate predecesso­r, Dr Reuben Abati, there are revealing insights for readers. I thank both of them for attending the book presentati­on. On the web portal, there is also the speech by former Head of State, General Abdulsalam­iAbubakar who, as chair of the occasion, arrived 10 minutes before the scheduled time of 10am to meet Chief EmekaAnyao­ku, Mr RemiMakanj­uola and several other members of their generation who were more discipline­d and had to be kept waiting for almost an hour before we started the event. On the website also is the book review by Dr OkeyIkechu­kwu. It also contains the addresses of the bookshops/ places where the books can be purchased.

Meanwhile, I have been overwhelme­d by the kind words and messages of solidarity, following the hacking and free distributi­on of my book, ‘Against The Run of Play’. While I thank all the people who have taken it upon themselves to fight the infringeme­nt on my intellectu­al property in the social media, and I have seen several efforts, I want to make two things clear. One, this battle is not about me. Two, given where I am coming from, I am not so much bothered by what happened. Perhaps, I should explain that.

I wrote my first book, ‘Before The Verdict’, in 1991 as a fresh reporter with The Guardian on Sunday. I collected the CVs of the 23 presidenti­al aspirants in both the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and National Republican Convention (NRC) which I then used to write their profiles. In my naivety, I imagined that members of the two political parties would find it useful before making their choices. I expended all my savings on it yet at the end, only one person paid for a copy: Mrs IretiKingi­be. I am not sure any other person read the book.

Following the disqualifi­cation of the 23 presidenti­al aspirants, I updated the book with the reports of the primaries that led to their disqualifi­cation and titled it ‘Fortress on Quicksand’. I printed about a thousand copies which I hawked around. The only person I can remember who gave me any money after collecting two copies of the book is Dr Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, one of the disqualifi­ed SDP presidenti­al aspirants at the time. A year later, I wrote “POLITRICKS: National Assembly under Military Dictatorsh­ip”.

Despite the fact that the book captured the entire debate on the June 12, 1993 presidenti­al election as well as all the drama preceding it, I got no feedbackth­at any of the people who took the copies, free of charge, read it. Yet, that did not deter me from writing, in August 1997, “Abiola’s Travails” to mark his 60th birthday at a time the winner of the annulled June 12, 1993 presidenti­al election was in detention. For that effort, only the then Chairman of PUNCH newspaper, Chief Ajibola Ogunsola gave me any financial support. That in itself is very instructiv­e since I was at the time a staff of Abiola’s Concord newspapers.

In all those efforts, what motivated me was to tell the background stories of the political developmen­ts at the time even when it was not financiall­y rewarding. But by the time I got married in December 1998, I had to come to terms with the fact that I no longer had any money to waste on books that I was not sure people were reading.

However, early in 2005, then as the editor of Sunday THISDAY, I wrote a column about those goading President Olusegun Obasanjo to seek a third term in office. Many of them were involved in the late General Sani Abacha’s controvers­ial transition programme that was designed to end with his adoption and I named names. The responses I got to the piece suggested that majority of Nigerians had forgotten. That was the inspiratio­n for another book: The Last 100 Days of Abacha.

Before I wrote a single line, I sent a mail to Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka that I was writing a book on Abacha and I would want him to present it for me. Days turned to weeks and I didn’t hear from him. Then, one day, I got a mail from him saying he would be in the country within two weeks and that he would like to see the manuscript. I had not even written a single line!

I went to Vanguard, PUNCH and Daily Times where I spent days using their libraries after which I wrote the draft. On completion, I sent the draft to Reuben Abati to help me look at. He called to say that he enjoyed it and that he would write a comment which I could use any way I liked. Without solicitati­on, that was how Reuben wrote what I turned to the Foreword while Col Abubakar Dangiwa Umar (rtd) wrote the Postscript. The book sold out within weeks despite the price tags of N8,000 for paperback and N15,000 for the hardback editions. It was the first financiall­y rewarding book I wrote.

The next book of course was “Power, Politics and Death”. Even though it was hacked from Day One, I still made some good money from it. In 2012 and 2013, I worked on The Verbatim Report (The Inside Story of the Fuel Subsidy Scam). It took me more than one year to complete but at the end, I put the book on my website for free download. It is one of the most extensive works on our oil and gas industry. It is about 800 pages. Interested readers can still download it free on my web portal just like the Abacha book.

I have gone to this length to let readers know that my motivation for writing has always been to tell compelling stories that would be read while monetary considerat­ion is secondary. However, as I stated in the statement I released on Sunday, I am more worried for people in creative arts and sciences, especially those in Nollywood, who are practicall­y at the mercy of hackers and pirates. When creative people in both the arts and sciences cannot be guaranteed the legitimate benefits of their sweat and investment­s, they lose the incentive to take the risk to create and innovate. And when that happens, the whole society loses.

I thank all the individual­s and groups who have taken it upon themselves to fight not only for me but against intellectu­al theft.

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