On "Half of A Yellow Sun" as an Interjection Fraud

[Oyeniyi Bukola Adeyemi]

I know many who rose to fame doing exactly what was described in the piece below. This is illegal. 

Permit me to recount my personal experience with something closer.  

In 2004, I wrote a policy paper (I will keep the subject so not to out anyone) and gave it to a professor who had a link to the then president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. 

Few months down the line, the professor's brother was appointed into one of Obasanjo's numerous commissions to lead a new project for the Federal Government. 

When the project came on stream, I could see without using binoculars where my policy paper ended. It ended on Obasanjo's table and fetched my professor's brother a job. 

Few months after this, the professor walked up to me to ask for my CV. Without anything said about my policy paper, he offered me a job. 

In the Netherlands in 2012, I submitted drafts of two projects to a friend to read through. He condemned the two, thrashing them both. 

Two days later, the two projects were published on a major university's website as new direction the Center was embarking upon. My friend was the anchor of the two projects. 

I reached out to our other mutual friends, copying them on our exchanges on the two projects, and the screenshots of the University publication to announce the new direction. I wrote to my friend, after he refused to pick my call to meet with him. He refused to meet with me.  

This was someone who gave me accommodation and fed me for 6 months when I was in dire need. In addition, he loaned me 1000 Euros at the hour of my need. I knew his family - mother, wife, kids, sisters, brothers, etc.

Prior to this, I had written and published two essays and included him as coauthor when he was faced with termination of employment for unproductivity - just to help him stay on his job. I also helped him with two drafts that were later published and, as fate would have it, his position was confirmed and he got promoted within the year. 

I thought of reporting to the authorities of the University about this intellectual fraud but for three reasons:

1. I had this strange feeling that given ask the ways that I have intervened in his matter, I was somehow complicit in his intellectual fraud.

2. He helped me greatly in my hours of need, giving me accommodation when I was sleeping at train station in cold Netherlands, losning me money to I was able to payback, some I did not even paid to date, etc.

3. I know many members of his family, who treated me like one of their own. 

If I outed him as a fraud and he was sacked, how would I explain and excuse myself to his family, most especially his young son that also calls me "Daddy"?

But a fraud is a fraud and no amount of great deeds can bestow cleanliness on a pig.

I cut all my ties with him, ever since. 

.........

HALF OF A YELLOW SUN IS A LITERARY FORGERY

A claim for copyright infringement has been made by Anne Giwa-Amu against Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Harper Collins Publishers in relation to the literary work, Half of A Yellow Sun. Anne Giwa-Amu, a law graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science, is demanding damages and an account of profit as a consequence of the infringement of her copyright in the literary work SADE.

In legal papers submitted to the Court, Ms Giwa-Amu alleged: “…a substantial amount of original material found in SADE, an earlier copyright work also appears in Half of A Yellow Sun a later work...Ms Adichie could not have included this by coincidence”. Ms Giwa-Amu alleged that in 1998 she sent a copy of her manuscript to Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, Nigeria. “Chinua Achebe, a writer linked to the Biafra propaganda effort, was the main decision maker on the Board of Directors at Heinemann”. Ms Giwa-Amu was informed that Chinua Achebe read and accepted SADE for publication for senior secondary school in Nigeria under the sub-title ‘SADE United We Stand’. Chinua Achebe later endorsed and promoted Half of A yellow Sun and one of his poems appears on the first page which would have entitled him to royalties from the sale. Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Adichie share the same literary agent, The Wylie Agency.

Ms Adichie wrote in the Premium Times that after the publication of her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, Chinua Achebe tried to arrange a meeting with her. Ms Adichie claims that after her communication with Achebe she wrote Half of A Yellow Sun. Ms Adichie admits that she had no experience of the civil war as she was born in 1977. She claims to have compiled HAYS after reading thirty-one books by writers who had first-hand experience of the war.

In the legal papers, Ms Giwa-Amu alleged that Ms Adichie reworded and expanded her novel SADE and copied the setting, structure, plot, language, themes, characterization, content, form, subject matter, supporting arguments and scenes. Ms Giwa-Amu has claimed that every incident from her literary work, SADE, has been copied and expanded upon to create a literary forgery.  

In 2016, the case was submitted at the County Court at Cardiff, Cardiff Civil Justice Centre, 2 Park Street, Cardiff, CF10 1ET. It has since been transferred to the High Court in London and back to the Central London County Court.

Claim number CO1CF281

E-mail: hear...@Cardiff.Countycourt.gsi.gov.uk

 tel: 02920 376400 or 02920 376417.

(c) Anne Giwa-Amu

[Coster Muleya]

Anne-Giwa Amu's case is bad at law. She will lose it and Chimananda will press some charges and damages.

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[Okey Iheduru]

Dear Oyeyemi Adeyemi:

Thanks for being clever by half. Perhaps you don't realize that this is not the type of forum where you can get away with this spurious attempt at self-praise and calumny against another person who is not here to defend herself. You deliberately removed all dates relating to your "scoop" you fiendishly dug up. I'm embarrassed that, as lettered and morally upright as you claim to be, you couldn't dig up a better dirt on Ms. Adichie! Can you swear that you didn't know that Giwa-Amu first made this false claim in 2016 but it was struck down by a United Kingdom court in 2019? 

To reiterate the information I believe you know but chose to suppress, Adichie had been researching Biafra for a long time, including interviewing relatives, her parents being survivors of the civil war which also claimed the lives of both her grandfathers before she wrote Half of Yellow Sun. Perhaps, you're ignorant of the fact that Chimamanda wrote a play about Biafra at the age of 17! She published a short story titled Half of A Yellow Sun before the novel. She did not meet Achebe until AFTER she finished her book. In mid-March 2020, Wylie Agency - the literary agency of multiple award-winning and internationally acclaimed Chimamanda Adichie - released a statement to rebuke the accusations made by Giwa-Amu. According to the agency: "A professional independent reader was appointed to read both novels. The reader concluded that there was absolutely no basis for Giwa-Amu’s claim and advised that the claim should not be pursued. Giwa-Amu nevertheless continued with the claim". 

Please read the news report below https://venturesafrica.com/chimamanda-to-get-compensation-from-a-failed-copyright-suit/

. Here's the summary of it: in February 2019 her claim was struck out by the court, which found it to be “an abuse of the court’s process.” Giwa-Amu was ordered to pay Adichie and her publishers £14,250 (₦6,310,702) as well as the legal costs incurred by Adichie.“Her present allegations are false, libellous and constitute harassment to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Further legal actions are being taken,” said the Wylie Agency, adding that “to date, Giwa-Amu has not paid the money.”

CHIMAMANDA TO GET COMPENSATION FROM A FAILED COPYRIGHT SUIT

Photograph — independent.co.uk

Award-winning novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has fiercely dismissed plagiarism claims on her award-winning novel Half of a Yellow Sun through her literary agency- Wylie.

In a Youtube video uploaded on Saturday, March 14, 2020, Nigerian-Welsh author Anne Giwa-Amu accused Adichie of plagiarising her own debut novel, “Sade” which was published in 1996 for the latter’s 2006 novel “Half of a Yellow Sun.” In the video, Giwa-Amu described Adichie’s book as “a rewrite of Sade” and said that “no one should profit from stealing another person’s work”. She then uploaded a lengthy document to her website laying out what she called “similarities” between the two novels.

Sade which is set during the Biafran war follows the mixed-race daughter of a Nigerian supreme court judge, who falls for an engaged barrister. Adichie’s Orange Prize-winning novel, published in 2006, follows lives torn apart by the Biafran war, focusing on an educated young woman, her houseboy and her lover, a professor.

The Nigerian-Welsh author also challenged Chimamanda in the Youtube video to publish her email correspondence with Chinua Achebe, publish the original manuscript she sent to the editors and publish the editor’s reviews. In a statement from Adichie’s literary agency- Wylie, They denied Giwa-Amu’s allegations and said that the author and her publishers “had never heard of Giwa-Amu’s novel until she brought her delusional claim” in 2016 when she first alleged plagiarism.

According to the literary agency, a “professional independent reader” studied both novels and “concluded that there was absolutely no basis for Giwa-Amu’s claim.” But Giwa-Amu continued with it, and in February 2019 her claim was struck out by the court, which found it to be “an abuse of the court’s process.” Giwa-Amu was ordered to pay Adichie and her publishers £14,250 (₦6,310,702) as well as the legal costs incurred by Adichie.“Her present allegations are false, libellous and constitute harassment to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Further legal actions are being taken,” said the Wylie Agency, adding that “to date, Giwa-Amu has not paid the money.”

Maintaining her stance in a Facebook post, Anne Giwa-Amu stated “ The Wylie Agency are the literary agents to Chimamanda Adichie and as such, they cannot claim to have instructed a professional ‘independent’ reader. If the claim had been heard both parties would have had to agree to an expert report. This did not happen and it is the first I have heard of any professional independent reader.” 

Although Giwa-Amu stated that the cost imposed on her by the court is irrational, she is still making her case for plagiarism and has refused to step down. Chimamanda has however not publicly commented on the allegations against her. 

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Okey C. Iheduru

e-mail: okeyi...@gmail.com

Recently published:

"The Catholic Church and Regional Governance in West Africa," International Affairs (London), 99 99: 2 (2023) 747–767; https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiad019

"A ‘fateful compromise’? Transnational religious organizations and regional governance in Africa," Territory, Politics, Governance: A Journal of Regional Studies Association, DOI: 10.1080/21622671.2022.2160371

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

In my view, it is not fitting that just because Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie got it all so horribly wrong by writing that devious epistle to her big daddy (sleepy joe biden) her mishap should serve as sufficient cause for ( in a mean-spirited spirit of vindictiveness) dredging up some improbable bygones, long since diffused, discarded dismantled  - such as the totally debunked Anne Giwa-Amu in order to settle the score with foot soldier Lady Adichie, Peter Obi’s female first-lieutenant  - at least verbally armed with her own special weapons of destruction ( “we should all be feminists”- she coos, including old joe biden, and Peter Obi should also accept or obey feline invitation,  I suppose?) 

In any case, Giwa-Amu can go sleep; in my humble opinion her Sister Adichie’s  Americanah is brilliant and by far, surpasses her “Half a Yellow Sun “  even if the latter is wrapped in the universal Biafra nationalist fervour worthy of a protégé of Chinua Achebe who she looks up to as one of her literary godfathers…

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