Social media was recently gripped with the story of Tobore Ovuorie. An award-winning, undercover Journalist in Nigeria, who went on a fact-finding mission abroad, to witness the gory details of human trafficking and to unearth some hard-to-find truths. However, it is not her life-story alone that ruled the social media, It is her claim, that Ms Mo Abudu, CEO, Ebony TV produced a movie based on her published story, her sojourn and journalistic investigations abroad, for-profit, without appropriate compensation or credit.
The movie, titled Oloture, talks about a Nigerian investigative reporter who goes into the world of sex trafficking on a mission to expose the criminals there. It drew inspiration from the report obtained from that dare-devil Human Trafficking Mafia as told by Tobore Ovuorie, published by Zam Magazine, the Netherlands on January 22, 2014, and Premium Times, Nigeria.
Mo Abudu claimed that her company EbonyLife bought the rights to make the story into a movie and hired a team of writers to make Oloture. Ovuorie claimed that the movie heavily plagiarises her life. She is demanding compensation to the tune of $5 million (₦25 billion). She released a video on social media accusing Mo Abudu of copyright infringement as well as barring her from benefitting from the movie project.
However, Mo Abudu made a rebuttal video and claimed that there is no copyright infringement in the case of Oloture . She said, EbonyLife acquired the rights to the movie and she had several conversations with Ovuorie before the movie was produced. The media mogul cum claimed that she was completely open with the journalist was fully informed of the Netflix acquisition of the movie. She also revealed that contrary to the allegations, Ovuorie cannot lay claim to the report; as it belongs to Premium Times and ZAM Chronicles based on Nigeria’s copyright law.
Speaking further on the subject, Tobore Ovuorie says it is important that the world gets to know that the cross-border sex traffickers have merged with even more ruthless crime syndicates and that murder for profit is a business that is mixed with prostitution and that women and men who may go into prostitution as a way to a good income abroad must realize that things have changed and that they may well be slaughtered for their organs. Tobore emphasized that her story should travel far and near so that people can be warned, she, however, will not agree to exploitation by movie producers such as Mo Abudu and others.
‘’ I almost died (and I saw death) when I took a 7-month long journey to investigate human trafficking. Now, I am going through the ordeal a second time watching my life story on TV, without full credit or compensation and the subsequent campaign of calumny. Netflix’s ‘Oloture’ is a copy and paste of my life story,’’ she said.
According to the 40-year-old journalist, the investigation took place in 2013. ‘‘ Some years back, while I was still an undergraduate, I had a very close friend, Ifueko, who suddenly disappeared from school and I later learnt she was taken to Italy for sex work. It was a rude shock to me because Ifueko was the type that when I would go to see her, she would ask me what bible passages, I had read that day. By the time I located her house, it was her grave that I met”. The shocking death of Ifueko hits Tobore hard and she struggled to find closure.
In 2013. South Africa based journalist Evelyn Groenink reached out to Tobore, who was at the time in the employ of another media house. She offered Tobore the opportunity to interview women who were about to be trafficked. Tobore said, “I sent a different proposal to her. I did state that the outcome would be wishy-washy. That, for me, wasn’t going to be a story that would transcend time. So I pitched something else and she fell in love with it. That was how the relationship started”.
The top-secret investigation supervised by ZAM CHRONICLE began in 2013 in both Lagos and Abuja. Tobore went undercover for months as Ogogo, an aspiring sex worker seeking greener pastures. The report sought to investigate the dangerous sex trafficking business prevalent in Nigeria. Eight years after the acclaimed report, Tobore admits she is still in therapy. She recounts getting raped, tortured and forced to watch the beheading of two girls. According to reports, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) collaborated with the International Women Media Foundation (IWMF) to get her checked into a rehabilitation centre in the United States of America.
Today, Tobore says her experiences have been filmed into an action-packed cinematic experience. However, Tobore insists the film is an adaptation of her work, one she did not authorize. ” ‘Oloture’ does not closely resemble my work, It is a copy and paste of my work. Oloture is my life story. Whosoever claimed they wrote that script should be flogged.” She said.
She demands that she gets due credit for the story which was credited to Mo Abudu, Heidi Uys and others. She hopes that the lawsuit if won would serve as a precedent for filmmakers looking to defraud others of their intellectual property.
Tobore said, she still experiences nightmares because of all that she went through during the investigations, particularly because of the beheadings she witnessed. ‘‘The two victims then seemed to be randomly chosen from our group, to quickly assemble a package right there. One of the visitors had pointed at me, but our traffickers decided that they had invested too much in me and chose the other two. What I discovered was the merger of criminal syndicates in the field of prostitution, human smuggling and organ traffic,” she said.
Tobore said this criminal merger has been driven by the war against human trafficking. ‘‘ Traffickers were not this sophisticated before now. It seems that the more we combat a situation in Nigeria, the more hardened, sophisticated and criminal the perpetrators become. This usually has to do with the fact that the criminals also reside at the top. A big problem is an erroneous assumption that girls can be ‘educated’ to stay away from prostitution. I don’t think people in more comfortable situations realise how much logical choice prostitution is for many families, girls, and even boys, who can’t see another way of getting an income. It is also a logical option for many of them to seek greener pastures abroad.’’
‘‘Therefore I conclude that criminalization of prostitution in Nigeria has helped the criminals and done a disservice to women whose only crime is that they seek greener pastures through sex work. ‘’
NigeriaNewsAbroad interviewed a Lagos sex worker, named Lauretta, who agree to this allusion. Laureta claimed to be an undergraduate at the University of Lagos, She opined that the fact that prostitution is illegal in Nigeria is one of the major reasons why Human Trafficking and other criminal activities thrive. Laureta said, ‘‘We cannot report crimes to the police for fear that we might be charged or exploited by the police as well. We will rather keep quiet and suffer in silence,’’ She said.
Laureta said, ‘‘Although, only in the books is sex work illegal in Nigeria, nearly all communities in the country have one brothel or two. Prostitution is widely practised all over the country. Policemen hardly charge us officially, they collect bribes from brothel owners and the girls as well. In the case of the girls, the bribes may be in cash or kind. In the major cities such as Lagos, Abuja or Port Harcourt, the brothels are many. Some sex workers don’t stay in brothels. They hang around, on the streets, clubs and hotels. They are walking sex workers. They hardly stay in a particular place. They move about. Prostitution has become part of the Nigerian culture. It is nearly impossible to eradicate it because most of the people that condemn us in the open, patronize us in secret,’’ She said.
‘‘This is why sex trafficking thrives in Nigeria. We have a thriving culture of prostitution which is criminalized only in theory. This makes it easy for other crimes to mingle with sex trades because sex workers hardly report crimes to law enforcement agencies since policemen also join in the exploitation.’’
Tobore said, ‘‘The element of murder is particularly unsettling. It is the sale of body parts. It isn’t widespread in the sense that people are murdered in this way all the time, but criminals have noticed that human organs can make them money, either for medical or ritual purposes. What I witnessed was the latter. ’’
‘‘In the present situation, it would be helpful if women could receive health care and support to return to their families, whether they were willing migrants or not. There should be an awareness that women can travel to work in prostitution in higher-income countries, and there may be ways Nigeria could find policies to tolerate this reality in a legal or semi-legal way. At least if they could just make their way legally to sex work abroad, they would not become enslaved by ruthless criminals.’’
‘‘ There should be assistance to women doing sex work in the fields of information, health care and advice. Such assistance desks should also be available for women in the countries where they work. Embassies of feeder countries should be purged of criminal infiltration. This won’t be easy but strong and continuous pressure on authorities in feeder countries, and monitoring of notorious embassies in host countries should have some effect.’’
Shortly after returning from her undercover assignment, Tobore Ovuorie won the Nigerian Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Journalism.
‘‘ My obvious interest had always been to be given appropriate credit for my work, far above the compensatory claim. My lawyers’ letter to EbonyLife had categorically demanded: “Compensation for copyright infringement of $5,000,000.00,’’ she said.
Tobore demands, the immediate inclusion of proper open credit and end credit in the Movie, acknowledging the adaptation of her work in line with industry standards and practices.’’
NigeriaNewsAbroad speaks with and Entertainment and Real Estate Lawyer, Ahmed Bakare. He agrees that Tobore Ovuorie has a good case but she is not going about it the right way. This case is not about Ebonylife alone. It should include Netflix who distributed the movie worldwide. Tobore should team up with her partners abroad. The people who supported her in embarking the investigations and took on Netflix and Ebonylife. They both have a case to answer,’’ he said. This is the best way to ensure that the truth is out.