Scriptwriter Drags Stephanie Okereke-Linus to Court

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

A prominent actress in the Nigerian film industry, Mrs Stephanie Okereke-Linus, has been taken to a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos for an alleged theft.

The actress was accused of intellectual theft by a scriptwriter, Daniella Madudu.

Madudu alleged that Mrs Linus adapted her novel titled ‘Behind the Veil’ into the movie, ‘Dry’, which the actress produced in 2014.

‘Dry’ focuses on Vesicovaginal fistula (VVF) condition and underaged marriage prominent among young women in the northern region of Nigeria.

The flick, directed and starred by Mrs Linus, narrated the story of a 13-year-old girl, Halima (Zubaida Ibrahim Fagge), whose poor uneducated parents married her off to Sani (Tijjani Faraga), a 60-year-old man, who constantly molested her.

Madudu, through her counsel, Mr Rafiu Bello, claimed the actress did not get any approval to adapt the novel into a film.

Mr Bello accused one Joy Ndidi, a script writer and former Personal Assistant to Mrs Linus, joined in the suit as the second defendant, of giving the novel’s manuscript to the actress.

But in her defence, Mrs Linus claimed she registered the script for ‘Dry’ on November 28, 2011 with the United States Copyright Office and then on July 27, 2012, with the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC), long before she met Ndidi in 2013.

She informed journalists that, “The so-called ‘original literary work’ of Daniella Madudu, that I was supposed to have appropriated in my movie, has never been registered at the Nigerian Copyright Commission even as we speak.”